Formative tests have a number of profound advantages over summative tests, including the following:

Formative tests provide important learning experiences. 

When a test is “summative”, the student takes it, gets a grade, and the process ends.  There is little opportunity to grow academically from the experience. On the other hand, a “formative” test, one that provides a chance to analyze the results and learn from them, is a fundamental building block of self-directed learning.  The test offers feedback to help the student focus his attention on exactly what he still needs to learn. This part of the learning process may be one of the most effective. It requires classroom structures that give the students the opportunity to look carefully at their mistakes and do the necessary work to learn from them.

Tests can be a measure of the effectiveness of the learning process. 

If a student feels the need to cram at the time of a test, it is a symptom of a learning process that needs correction — perhaps the student is not getting enough conversational learning or he needs more opportunities to practice a new skill.  On the other hand, if the learning process is working well, a student may not need to study much for a test. Cramming, in fact, may become an obsolete behavior. His readiness to show what he knows builds and grows throughout the unit, rather than occurring in a burst of activity at the end. Knowledge that is built steadily over time — and is obtained as a sequence of learning goals that are met successfully — is much more likely to be integrated into the student’s mind and be truly learned.

Tests can provide an overview of the material being learned. 

Preparing for a test provides an opportunity for the student to step back from the work he has been doing day by day and synthesize the material into a coherent whole.  When the class slows down and reflects on what has been happening over the past week or two, concepts or skills that were new and perhaps not solidly understood can now be seen as steps along the way — steps which make more sense in retrospect than they did when they were first introduced.

Tests can inform the teacher whether the pace of the class has been appropriate. 

When a whole class does badly on a test, that tells you that they weren’t ready as a group.  This can happen when the pace is too quick and there hasn’t been enough time for everyone to digest the new material and work with it.  It can happen because the scope of the unit was too large, and pieces have been forgotten or not synthesized into the whole. It can also happen when there has been insufficient time for the students to gain the necessary overview of the unit to make the pieces meaningful to them.  In any case, the test can be seen as a snapshot of the learning process at that moment.

Tests can inform an individual student whether his proficiency level is sufficient to move on. 

Tests should occur when the body of students have mastered the material and are ready to take on the next topic.  When that happens, there will often be at least a few students who haven’t reached that level of mastery. Tests can tell them, in a non-judgmental way, that they need to do more work.  If the structure of reviewing tests is functioning well, a student will discover precisely what aspects of the material he still needs to learn. This will drive the remediation process.

Tests can help cultivate grit. 

“Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” — Japanese proverb

One of the unintended casualties of traditional test-taking is student tenacity.  Imagine you are a student who does badly on tests, say in algebra. When you get a test back with a low score, you put it away and move on to the next unit with the rest of the class.  Because there is no mechanism for learning from your mistakes, you are prevented from responding to the problem, whatever its cause. You are, in effect, being trained to acquiesce in the face of failure.

This experience is, of course, demoralizing and even humiliating, especially if it happens over and over.  Equally bad, it is squandering an opportunity to learn to have grit in the face of adversity; students are trained not to have tenacity, to stand back up and figure out how to recover.  This problem is being experienced by countless students every day in schools everywhere.  

Remediation gives a student the opportunity to internalize the essential character traits of optimism and tenacity, (“I can learn this if I keep trying”).  He is practicing the ability to see mistakes and failure as feedback. Having grit in the face of negative feedback is an essential attribute of self-directed learners.  Without it, the motivation to persevere when the going gets tough dwindles, and the learning process is stymied.

Remediation helps a student learn to push through self-imposed ceilings on his academic success.  He is thus being trained in a growth mindset, in the belief that effective effort leads to success. In so doing, his is also practicing a life skill that is important in every future endeavor.