At the institutional or program level (User Path 2), assessments are employed for planning, conducting needs assessments, conducting program evaluations, meeting external accountability requirements, and in formulating policy. Institutional decisions made using assessments can also be classified as formative and summative. Formative program decisions are geared towards program planning or improvement, while summative program decisions are intended to determine the merit or worthwhileness of a program or service. This chapter introduced you to several related concepts, such as, large scale assessment, accountability, and high stakes assessments that could affect programmatic functions.

Page 5