Compare methods

	Formative Assessment	Response to Intervention
Field	Education	Education
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1998	2006
Originator	Scriven (term); Bloom; Black & Wiliam (modern synthesis)	Special education / school psychology field (Deno; Fuchs & Fuchs; Vaughn)
Type	Instructional process using evidence of learning to adapt teaching and feedback	Tiered framework for screening, intervention, and learning-disability identification
Seminal source	Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74.	Fuchs, D., & Fuchs, L. S. (2006). Introduction to response to intervention: What, why, and how valid is it? Reading Research Quarterly, 41(1), 93–99.
Aliases	Assessment for Learning, Classroom Formative Assessment, Feedback-Based Assessment, Embedded Formative Assessment	RTI, RtI, Multi-Tiered System of Supports, MTSS
Related	4	4
Summary	Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the practice of gathering evidence of student understanding during instruction and using it immediately to adjust teaching and to give feedback that moves learning forward. Unlike summative assessment, which measures learning after the fact for grading or accountability, formative assessment is woven into the teaching cycle. Synthesized influentially by Black and Wiliam, it is defined not by the type of instrument but by whether the resulting evidence actually changes subsequent instruction and learning.	Response to intervention (RTI) is a multi-tiered framework for preventing academic failure and identifying students with learning disabilities by their responsiveness to high-quality instruction. All students are screened and taught with evidence-based core instruction; those who fall behind receive progressively more intensive intervention while their progress is closely monitored. Students who fail to respond even to intensive, well-implemented intervention are flagged as needing further evaluation. RTI reframes disability identification from a static test discrepancy to a dynamic question of who does not respond to good teaching.