Advancing Methodologies to Support Both Summative and Formative Assessments

Ying Cheng University of Notre Dame USA
Hua-Hua Chang University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign USA

A volume in the Chinese American Educational Research
and Development Association Book Series
Series Editor Jinfa Cai, University of Delaware
Over the past thirty years, student assessment has become an increasingly important
component of public education. A variety of methodologies in testing have been developed to
obtain and interpret the wealth of assessment outcomes. As assessment goals are getting
increasingly multifaceted, new testing methodologies are called for to provide more accessible
and reliable information on more complex constructs or processes, such as students' criticalthinking
and problem-solving skills.
Testing methodologies are needed to extract information from assessments on such complicated skills, in order to advise teachers
about certain areas of students that need intervention. It is even a bigger challenge, and a vital mission of today's large-scale
assessments, to gain such information from testing data in an efficient manner. For example PARCC and Smarter Balanced
Assessments consortia are both striving to offer formative assessments through individualized, tailored testing. The book provides
state-of-the-art coverage on new methodologies to support tradit ional summative assessment, and more importantly, for emerging
formative assessments.