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Formative vs. Summative Tests: What Is the Difference?

Teachers use two broad categories of assessment throughout the school year: formative assessments and summative assessments. Both serve important purposes, but they work differently and tell you different things about your child’s learning.

Formative Assessments: Checking Along the Way

Formative assessments happen during the learning process. Their purpose is to give the teacher (and ideally the student) ongoing feedback about how well the material is being understood. They help teachers decide whether to slow down, reteach a concept, or move forward.

Examples of formative assessments include:

  • Daily homework assignments
  • In-class quizzes or “exit tickets”
  • Short reading checks or quick writes
  • Class discussions and teacher observation
  • Whiteboards or hand signals used to check understanding in real time

Formative assessments are often low-stakes or ungraded. Even when graded, they typically carry less weight than major tests. Their real value is informational — they help the teacher adjust instruction and help students identify what they need to review.

Summative Assessments: Evaluating What Was Learned

Summative assessments happen after a period of learning — at the end of a unit, a semester, or a school year. They measure how much a student has mastered over that period.

Examples of summative assessments include:

  • End-of-unit tests or chapter exams
  • Midterm and final exams
  • Major research papers or projects
  • State standardized tests (see Standardized Tests)
  • AP and IB exams

Summative assessments are typically high-stakes and heavily weighted in the final grade. They are designed to evaluate overall mastery, not to guide day-to-day instruction.

Why This Distinction Matters for Parents

When your child comes home with a low score on a formative quiz, it usually means they haven’t fully grasped the material yet — which is normal and expected. The more important question is whether they understand it by the time the summative test arrives.

If your child consistently struggles on both formative and summative assessments in the same subject, that is a clearer signal that additional support may be needed. Consider reviewing how to talk to the teacher about what you’re seeing.

Tip: Ask your child’s teacher at the start of each semester how grades are weighted. Many teachers weight summative tests at 60–70% of the final grade, while formative work makes up the remainder. Knowing this helps you understand which assessments matter most for the report card grade.

A Note on “Diagnostic” Assessments

Some teachers and schools also use diagnostic assessments at the very beginning of a unit or school year. These are given before teaching begins, purely to understand what students already know. They should never negatively affect a grade — they are information-gathering tools for the teacher. Many standardized screeners, such as DIBELS for early reading, are diagnostic in nature.