The assessment problems in this guide offer K-2 teachers a beginning toward building a bank of math tasks that measure whether or not their students are becoming better problem solvers. The problems can be used as tools to use when teaching the strategies of effective problem solving and as informal assessments to help teachers see what their…

Twenty-five profiles of college and university programs using teaching portfolios to evaluate faculty are presented to illustrate how portfolio use relates to institutional context and purposes of evaluation. An introductory section makes observations about the profiles in general and highlights some issues emerging during preparation of the…

A study focused on three graduate students (within a class of six) as they encountered the portfolio process for the first time as learners. Each was asked to complete a learning portfolio as a self-evaluation component for a 14-week graduate reading course. The students determined their goals based on self-assessment, documented their progress…

This paper examines the use of student portfolios for assessment at the college level. Portfolios, which have recently been used extensively on the elementary and middle school levels, are collections of artifacts gathered to represent a student's work. After describing current dissatisfactions with the dominant standardized testing student…

This collection of examples of authentic assessments has been compiled to provide a sampling of the many new strategies for evaluating student work and learning that are being developed and used in schools around the country. These strategies are called "authentic" because they require that students demonstrate what they can do as…

Based on the premise that portfolios form part of a process to enable the teacher more truly to become a facilitator, this report presents the narratives of an 8th-grade reading workshop teacher and a 12th-grade honors course teacher. The report begins with a brief section explaining the principles of the project. The format of the report is a…

Intended for teachers of all subjects, grades 3 through 12, this book explains how teachers can build a community of writers in which the students use portfolios to demonstrate progress and accomplishment across the curriculum. The book outlines practical strategies for ensuring that every student explores a variety of meaningful challenges. The…

The portfolio procedures a teacher-educator uses in an undergraduate course in teaching reading in the elementary school have proven successful in helping students begin to articulate a philosophy of literacy instruction and assessment. The process also contributes additional benefits to students' levels of self-esteem, self-confidence, and their…

As part of a qualitative study of education reform in four rural Kentucky school districts, this report examines instructional changes that have occurred in the upper primary grades as a result of the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA). Researchers interviewed 13 principals, 37 teachers, and 14 eighth-grade students; observed 73 teachers working…

This book describes how schools can develop and utilize portfolios as frameworks for evaluating school reform. The portfolio is a nonthreatening self-assessment tool that exhibits a school's goals, progress, achievement, and vision for improvement. Chapter 1 examines the school portfolio as an effective and positive, ongoing monitoring system that…

This paper describes how teacher portfolios could be used to provide teachers with the opportunity to grow professionally in concert with other teachers and in ways that promote school, district, and professional student performance standards. An opening section discusses the lack of progress in developing effective teacher evaluation and…

The goal of this revised edition is to describe and illustrate the process of implementing ecological assessment in classrooms. The focus is on the process of change. Teachers who assess ecologically create classroom environments that are small ecosystems representative of the larger literacy system outside the classroom. New developments in…

This paper describes the first stages of a project focusing on the use of preservice-­teacher-­generated e-­Portfolios as a means of documenting and assessing inquiry-­based teaching and learning. The project is designed to explore ways in which preservice teacher-created e-­Portfolios can be used to (1) document how inquiry lives in practice, and…

"Assessing Expressive Learning" is the only book in the art education field to date to propose and support a research-supported teacher-directed authentic assessment model for evaluating K-12 studio art, and to offer practical information on how to implement the model. This practical text for developing visual arts assessment for grades…

After two years of unsuccessful pilot programs for e-portfolio development within the Teacher Education Department at the University of Indianapolis, implementation of an INTASC (Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium) standards-based assessment system including digital portfolio building using TaskStream (TS) seems to hold…