Portfolios Plus: A Critical Guide to Alternative Assessment

This book is intended to help educators in developing and implementing assessment systems to recognize the many options available for consideration. The author promotes reconsideration of testing assumptions, approaches, and their implications by educators and the educational measurement community, including the intended audience - measurement researchers and students. Linda Mabry is a faculty member at Washington State University specializing in program evaluation, student assessment, and research and evaluation methodology. She currently serves as president of the Oregon Program Evaluation Network and on the editorial board for Studies in Educational Evaluation. She has served in a variety of leadership positions for the American Evaluation Association, including the Board of Directors, chair of the Task Force on Educational Accountability, and chair of the Theories of Evaluation topical interest group. She has also served n the Board of Trustees for the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessments and on the Performance Assessment Review Board of New York. She has conducted evaluations for the U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Jacob Javits Foundation, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Ameritech Corporation, ATT-Comcast Corporation, the New York City Fund for Public Education, the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, the Chicago Teachers Academy of Mathematics and Science, and a variety of university, state, and school agencies. She has published in a number of scholarly journals and written several books, including Evaluation and the Postmodern Dilemma (1997) and Portfolios Plus: A Critical Guide to Performance Assessment (1999). PART ONE: ASSESSMENT, THE ENGINE AND ODOMETER OF REFORM Trends and Contexts Paradigms Purposes Scoring Equity PART TWO: EXAMPLES OF ASSESSMENTS Emily Dickinson's Literacy Portfolios LEAP's Curriculum-Based Assessment of Integrated Curriculum Units Walden III's Rite of Passage Experience (ROPE) Eagle's Wing Projects Pan Terra's Learning Contracts PART THREE: THE PORTFOLIO PLANNER