The effects of POWERSOURCE^© assessments on middle-school students’ math performance

Abstract

This paper describes results from field testing of middle-school math formative assessments alongside professional development and instructional resources. We employed a randomised, controlled design to address the question: Does using our formative assessment strategies improve student performance on assessments of key mathematical ideas relative to a comparison group? This study also provided data on the instructional sensitivity of the assessments, which is part of the validation needed for formative assessments. Teachers were recruited from two districts and seven middle schools. Nineteen treatment and 17 comparison group teachers and their students were included in study analyses. Scores on extended response and short-answer questions indicated that students in the treatment group performed better than students in the comparison group who received the formative assessments alone. These findings demonstrate both the feasibility and value of including performance task-types in a brief assessment context.

Keywords:

• middle school
• math
• formative assessment

Acknowledgements

The work reported herein was supported under the Educational Research and Development Centers Program, PR/Award Number R305A050004. The findings and opinions expressed in this paper do not reflect the positions or policies of the National Center for Education Research, the Institute of Educational Sciences, or the US Department of Education.

We would like to thank Pete Goldschmidt for his thoughtful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.