Formative Summative

Formative evaluation is an assessment of efforts prior to their completion for the purpose of improving the efforts. It is a technique that has become well developed in the education and training evaluation literature. So formative evaluation the cook tasting the cookies prior to serving them to patrons in a restaurant. Formative evaluation would be having your brother try the spaghetti sauce prior to dinner guest coming over to see if it needs some sugar. So we are using this for development purposes.
So, the NC Science End of Grade Field Test that was adminstered to 8th grades last year was a formative evaluation of sorts. 8th graders are a major stakeholder in this, so they were allowed to be, or made to be, testers of the test. Interesting. So you get their results, look for trends, disagradate the data. I've got it. But do you tell kids that they are taking a test that "doesn't count". Will they give it their all?
Or is that why we do this Formative Summative evaluation? We throw field test question into the regular EOG and EOC. As I adminstered the Algebra I EOC recently, I remember thinking wow, field test questions imbeded in the EOC?!?!? Is that fair? Is that normal? Well, my answer is still the same I don't know. But, I guess as an educator I kind of understand why it was done, but for those students that freak out and have major test anxiety, they don't need anything "extra".