Change is inevitable in education. Constant innovations to improve teaching and learning are expected. Assessment of innovation is essential in ensuring that teaching practices are effective and student learning and performance is inline with intending learning outcomes. Formative and summative evaluations are tools that can gauge the success of an innovated change. Formative evaluation can be a guide for improvement during implementation, whereas summative evaluation measures proficiency once implementation is complete. Using these tools together can help an administrator determine if the change is beneficial. Below is a brief description of the current evaluation process and recommend improvements …show more content…
Usually directed at appraising the learning progress of students at the end of a term or semester. This type of assessment is useful in discovering who is exceeding, meeting, or is below the standards, but allows for learning gaps to develop when formative assessment is not coupled with the process. For example, RUSM Day School introduced project-based learning along with year-round schooling last year. A summative assessment was done at the end of the fall and spring semester to measure if targeted student progress was achieved. The expectation was that all students would at least meet the standards for their grade level. Unfortunately, testing reveled that many students since this change were digressing academically. The negative data obtained by the summative assessment resulted in a change back to our old traditional teaching and learning methods in hopes that adequate yearly progress could be meet for every student. The project-based learning and year-round schooling last year was cut short because of problems due to change. Based on results from these test administration decided that the advantages of the innovation did not sufficiently outweigh the disadvantages (Gorton & Alston, …show more content…
Change comes with many challenges most of which are unavoidable. Conducing both summative and formative evaluations can help to navigate these challenges and improve practices for the future. RUSM Day School experienced setbacks from introducing project-based learning and year-round schooling based upon data from summative assessment. The new innovations were quickly dismissed as a result of the poor student outcomes. Summative and formative assessment practiced together in this situation would have given the school a better chance for success. “An administrator can watch it occur, can resist it, or can help guide and direct it.” (Gorton & Alston, p. 210, 2012).” For the future RUSM Day School administration could require both approaches, summative and formative for evaluating and assessing the change. This would be a more satisfactory process for integrating