Tough Teacher Evaluation and Formative Assessment: Oil and Water?

Although empirical and experiential evidence continues to indicate that the formative-assessment process improves students’ learning, many of today’s teachers are reluctant to employ it. This reluctance stems from their warranted concerns about the increasingly rigorous teacher-evaluation programs that almost every teacher in America will soon be undergoing. Clearly threatened by these federally stimulated teacher-appraisal procedures, many teachers are loath to try anything new—including formative assessment. Yet, because federal guidelines for state-level teacher evaluation programs call for significant reliance on evidence of students’ learning, when teachers employ formative-assessment in their own classrooms, they are more likely to promote the very sort of student growth that will result in positive teacher evaluations. This analysis describes the formative-assessment process, examines the nature of federally spawned teacher evaluation, and suggests how the two can happily coexist.