States and teacher preparation programs across the country are increasingly using a teacher candidate assessment called edTPA. The purpose? To make sure that teacher candidates are ready and able to teach before they begin their careers. The teacher performance assessment requires candidates to compile a portfolio that consists of lesson plans,…

Conventional assessments do not meet the cognitive demands of the world today. WICS, an acronym for wisdom, intelligence, and creativity, synthesized, can provide a more meaningful model. Findings from the Rainbow Project, conducted by the Center for the Psychology of Abilities, Competencies, and Expertise, showed that assessing students for…

Portfolios provide students with opportunities to communicate the story of their learning to their parents. During one Illinois school's portfolio evenings, children use portfolio materials to demonstrate how their writing and understanding of numbers has changed since last year. Excerpts from a sample five-year student portfolio are presented.…

Dennie Palmer Wolf's career has taken her from teaching in a two-room schoolhouse to groundbreaking research on portfolios and alternative assessments. Today she directs PACE (Performance Collaboratives for Education) and is a senior research associate at Harvard Graduate School of Education. In an unequal society, schools are obligated to help…

When carefully conceived, portfolios can significantly advance a teacher's professional growth and preserve evidence of exemplary teaching. More than a scrapbook or steamer trunk of eye-catching materials, a teaching portfolio is an ongoing, collaborative process that carefully and thoughtfully documents a set of accomplishments attained over an…

Professional literature extols the potential benefits of portfolios for teaching, learning, and assessment--particularly compared with traditional multiple-choice tests. Although initial findings favor portfolio assessments, the challenges lie in ensuring technical quality, equity, and feasibility for large-scale assessment purposes. Two major…

Describes efforts by teachers and administrators in Menomonee Falls School District near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to jointly develop a professional-development certificate for teachers. Describes requirements for earning the certificate and benefits related thereto. (PKP)

A recent employer survey sponsored by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills found that the skills new job entrants most need for success in the workplace--oral and written communication, time management, critical thinking, problem solving, personal accountability, and the ability to work effectively with others--are the areas in which recent…

Educators at the New City School in St. Louis, Missouri, employ a schoolwide approach to multiple intelligences. The school changed its practices in three primary directions: curriculum development, student assessment, and communication with parents. Learning centers, living museums, videotaped portfolios, and standardized exam results attest to…

For the past few years, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and the Coalition of Essential Schools have been investigating the digital portfolio--a software program that creates a multimedia collection of student work and aligns it with performance standards. Of five critical elements, school culture is the most crucial for making the…

Teachers are receiving mixed messages about assessment. Encouraged to use alternative assessment practices, they are expected to express a student's progress in a single letter grade. Interviews with eight urban middle school teachers participating in the QUASAR (Quantitative Understanding: Amplifying Student Achievement and Reasoning) Project…

Dissatisfied with their present parent-teacher conference format, an Iowa middle school perused the literature on student-led conferences and established three program implementation phases: initial preparations, conferences, and evaluations. Students selected portfolio items, decided what to discuss with parents, and rehearsed the conference…

Mandating portfolios on a systemwide or statewide basis may destroy one of their greatest assets: allowing students to reflect on their learning and feel a sense of hope and control. Once standards are defined by an outside authority, teacher-student collaboration is minimized and the importance of students' own goals and learning assessment…

Under the 1997 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act Amendments, all states must now include students with disabilities in statewide and districtwide educational assessments. So far, Kentucky is the only state with a comprehensive alternative portfolio-assessment program for students unable to participate in "regular" testing…

Summarizes results of a 3-year national study of performance assessments' effects on teaching and learning, based on visits to 16 schools implementing these assessments. Performance assessments marginally affected curriculum, but substantially influenced instruction and teacher role. Changing assignment and assessment format will not increase…