Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom
Assessment by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam
This article constitutes an important milestone in the history of formative assessment.
Following an extensive survey of research litterature, Black and William’s concluded that formative assessment was one of the best ways of raising standards.
“The main plank of our argument is that standards
can be raised only by changes that are put into direct effect by teachers and pupils in classrooms. There is a body of firm evidence that formative assessment is an essential component of classroom work and that its development can raise standards of achievement. We know of no other way of raising standards for which such a strong prima facie case can be made. Our plea is that national and state policy makers will grasp this opportunity and take the lead in this direction.”
Our definition of formative assessment is greatly influenced by the following sentence from that article.
“assessment becomes formative assessment when the
evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching to meet student needs”
The article can be found at: