This paper aims at analyzing summative and formative functions of mandatory school performance tests. The analysis reveals that mandatory testing, which has been implemented by the German states in the last 5 years, can be attributed as summative assessment. As a consequence, mandatory testing provides only little fine-grained feedback information for data-based school improvement. The last section of this paper discusses international examples how to combine summative and formative functions of mandatory testing systems effectively.

Keywords
mandatory testing, formative assessment, summative assessment, evaluation, data based school improvement, school performance feedback