"All assessment is formative—what a great idea! Here's a resource to take you from good assessment ideas to good assessment practices. Building on the work of many assessment and professional development experts, DiRanna and her colleagues have created a reasoned and realistic guide to assessment-centered teaching that is grounded in the realities of the classroom and that aspires to greater student learning."

Elizabeth K. Stage, Director, Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California, Berkeley

"An excellent and timely resource for administrators, teachers, teacher educators, and inservice professionals. This book sheds light on the all-too-often missing link in teaching and learning: formative assessment. Applicable across subject areas and grade levels, this resource provides a very helpful balance of educational vision and rationale, practical tools and procedural guidance, and compelling stories of transformed instruction in teachers’ own words."

Pamela Aschbacher, Director of Research and Evaluation, Caltech Precollege Science Initiative, California Institute of Technology

"Makes practical the notion that teaching, learning, and assessment go hand-in-hand. Good teaching activities make good assessment tasks and vice versa. The reflective practitioner, as envisioned in this book, uses assessment information to re-engage students and move them along a progression of learning. This is a valuable book for practitioners who wish to improve their teaching and their students’ learning, and for researchers concerned with putting ideas of formative assessment into teaching practice."

Richard J. Shavelson, Margaret Jack Professor of Education, Stanford University

"This ambitious work provides nothing short of a blueprint for raising teacher education programs to new standards for professional preparation, which in turn would improve student achievement levels. Drawing from conceptual principles and empirical findings that establish the crucial role of ongoing formative assessment, the authors describe a professional development framework and program that actually prepares teachers to adjust their teaching to student thinking in the moment and to refine assessments to better reveal students’ understandings throughout instruction. I highly recommend this book to scholars, practitioners, and interested stakeholders in teaching and teacher development."

Joan I. Heller, Director, Heller Research Associates