According to author Dylan Wiliam, because lessons never go exactly as planned, teachers should build plan B into plan A. This involves designing a lesson with a "hinge" somewhere in the middle and using specific kinds of questions--what he calls hinge questions--to quickly assess students' understanding of a concept before moving on.…

The idea that validity should be considered a property of inferences, rather than of assessments, has developed slowly over the past century. In early writings about the validity of educational assessments, validity was defined as a property of an assessment. The most common definition was that an assessment was valid to the extent that it…

This article explores the use of standardized tests to hold schools accountable. The history of testing for accountability is reviewed, and it is shown that currently between-school differences account for less than 10% of the variance in student scores, in part because the progress of individuals is small compared to the spread of achievement…

This September 2010 article is a reprint of the original October 1998 article. Few reform initiatives focus on what goes on in the "black box" of the classroom, on what really happens in the interaction between teachers and students. This article is about the inside of the black box. The authors focus on one aspect of teaching: formative…

The teacher is the most important influence on student achievement. Students who get the best teachers learn at twice the rate of students taught by average teachers. Greater improvement in teacher quality can be obtained, at a lower cost, by investing in teacher learning. The research on teacher learning shows that teacher learning communities…

By integrating classroom formative assessment practices into daily activities, educators can substantially increase student engagement and the rate of student learning. The second edition of this best-selling book by Dylan Wiliam presents new research, insights, and formative assessment strategies and techniques teachers can immediately apply in…

In partnership with Joint School District 2 in Meridian, Idaho, this theory-driven study assessed the impact of Keeping Learning on Track® (KLT™), a professional development program pioneered by Dylan Wiliam and his colleagues at the Educational Testing Service (ETS). A team of Northwest Evaluation Association™ (NWEA™) researchers surveyed…

Drawing on data from 120 interviews with secondary schools students of mathematics aged from 14 to 18 in England and the United States, this paper argues that young people's developing identities are an important and neglected factor in success at secondary school mathematics. Students in both countries believe mathematics to be rigid and…

Assessment for learning, as opposed to assessment of learning, requires educators to make a major shift--from quality control in learning to quality assurance, from assessing at the end of teaching to assessing while learning is still taking place. Five nonnegotiable strategies define the territory of assessment for learning: clarifying and…

While it is generally acknowledged that increased use of formative assessment (or assessment for learning) leads to higher quality learning, it is often claimed that the pressure in schools to improve the results achieved by students in externally-set tests and examinations precludes its use. This paper reports on the achievement of secondary…

Formative assessment has recently become a focus of renewed research as state and federal policy-makers realize that summative assessments have reached a point of diminishing returns as a tool for increasing student achievement. Consequently, supporters of large-scale testing programs are now beginning to consider the potential of formative…