Since the 70s seminal work of Bloom and his colleagues on formative assessment, class room assessment research has considerably enlarged and diversified its investigations. This paper illustrates the main directions of the field’s expansion and addresses some aspects of the reorganization of the notions and concepts as they occurred in the journal Mesure et évaluation en éducation. The paper focuses on the important role of learning objectives, on the growth of formative assessment from its original model, on the distinction to be made between different purposes of summative assessment and finally on the major issue around the assessment of competencies. Despite significant progress in the field, this paper concludes that classroom assessment research has never been so much needed as it must meet with an increased number of requests and requirements initiated by the recent school reforms.