The Summative: Why and How

I've been giving the role of the Summative assessment a lot of thought lately.  My main argument for using a summative assessment would be to evaluate long-term retention.  My main argument against it is that this is a one-shot assessment that may or may not be accurate.

How do I have it both ways?

One of my favorite SBG blogs, ThinkThankThunk, proposes a creative and logical solution.  This is based upon the argument he quotes from another blog which essentially asks this: Does the summative have to override all previous data?  Since this is a one-shot deal, I don't believe so.  However, it is a last-chance indicator for what standards students retain.  So how do you count it?

The solution he proposes is to count the summative separate from your other standards grades.  He has a midterm and final, which each account for their own 7.5% of the grade, for a total of 15%.  This ensures that students must do at least decently on the final to achieve an A, but a student who doesn't test well still has the opportunity to achieve a B (and possibly an A) if they have worked diligently to achieve the standards in the class.  Simple, yet brilliant.

The other implication is that I do not need to assess every standard in my summative assessment, and I do not have to be quite as thorough as I have been in my formative assessments.  For example, with approximately 100 vocabulary words, I do not have to worry about picking the "tough words", because this does not override the work students have done previously.

In addition, when there are multiple ways to assess the same standard, I do not have to worry about assessing students in a way that would skew their grade on a one-shot test.  In my formative assessments, I will give students the opportunities to reassess in any way that gives them an opportunity to show me what they know by their preferred manner.  On a summative, students do not have this opportunity.  For example, vocab may be assessed by matching or by translating.  The highest score students can achieve through matching is a Proficient - to earn an Advanced, they must translate without the English words present to jog their memory.  Therefore, it would be unfair to assess all students with only the matching option, since Advanced students do not have the opportunity to show that they are, indeed, Advanced.  However, it wouldn't be fair to assess everyone by translating and then allowing that grade to override all others, since students that could earn a Proficient through matching may only be able to earn a Basic if asked to translate.  Therefore, the summative accounts for these by assessing only in ways where all grades (including an Advanced) can be earned, and then being entered separately, rather than overriding all previous achievement.