Teacher Tools for
Setting the Groundwork: Our Path Toward Meaningful and Quantifiable Portfolio Assessment
by Martha B. Martin
Pocatello Community Charter School in Pocatello, Idaho
Tools to Help Produce Measurable Educational Goals
1. Portfolio Requirements for each of multiage crews:
2. Portfolio Assessment
Our one-page portfolio summary serves as a report card of sorts. It is something we can put in a cumulative file that provides parents or other educators with a lot of assessment information at a glance. It is helpful to us in that, when students move to another level after passages, the new teacher will have some information about a student's academic performance in terms of state standards and standardized tests. The portfolio itself goes home after passages, so we have to have some type of record here at school.
The portfolio summary also serves as a means for gathering quantifiable data on the extent to which students have met the state performance standards. In the past, the only quantifiable data we were able to provide was on standardized tests. Now we are able to collect and report data on our own assessment measures. For instance, once we have this system in place for a year, we will be able to say things like, "80 percent of our fourth graders have met or exceeded the state performance standards in reading." Also, if a student transfers from our school to a district school or goes on to high school, his/her new teacher(s) will be able to see how the student is doing in terms of meeting state standards in all the curriculum areas. We do not give letter grades but we feel this is much less ambiguous.
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