W. James Popham

Popham, who opposes the current do all end all state testing, takes quite a different approach to assessment. He looks at formative rather than the summative once a year kinds. Formative assessment happens continuously during the teaching and learning process, not just at year’s or semester’s end. Popham teaches his four-tiered system beginning with the planning and instillation of tools and procedures, followed by assessing student level tactics, followe by adjusting classroom climate, and ending with school-wide implementation. He is looking at a wide variety of factors that happen or should happen every day to demonstrate that excellence in learning is happening. Should the current craze in summative testing come under questioning, then this book will provide one of the major options. For that reason, it should be in your collection if not in your head as teacher librarian/leader. Recommended as a work from a major scholar in the field.… (more)