Prepared by Jean M.

Millare for PfEd 311 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

PORTFOLIO ASSESSMEN Towards the end of the school year, work products that
represent not only best nal versions but also indicate how
the nal products were created can be featured in a display
“Assessment should be part of instruction, not apart from
portfolio
it” is a point of view most supporters of portfolio
assessment would eagerly agree with.
There are alternative procedures in carrying out portfolio
assessment, but the major consideration lies in the
In education, portfolios refer to systematic collections of
teacher’s use of portfolio assessment as an essential part of
students’ work. It is a method to display skills and
the instructional process
accomplishments.
Because portfolios can be tailored to a speci c student’s
An important characteristic of portfolios is that they must
evolving growth, the ongoing diagnostic value of portfolios
be updated as a person’s achievements and skills grow
for teachers is immense
Portfolio assessment is an alternative to more traditional
Roger Farr, a leader in language arts instruction and
forms of educational testing. It allows for self-assessment of
assessment, argues that the real payoff from proper
progress and/or accomplishments. Also, it engages students
portfolio assessment is that students’ self-evaluation
in establishing ongoing learning goals
capabilities are enhanced/nurtured. Thus, during portfolio
conferences, the teacher encourages students to come up
with personal evaluations of their own work.
CLASSROOM PORTFOLIO ASSESSMEN
The conference, then, becomes far more than just an
Many supporters of portfolio assessment believe the real
opportunity for the teacher to give an “oral report card.”
nal outcome of such assessment approaches lie in the
On the contrary, students’ self-evaluation skills are nurtured
individual teacher’s classroom. This is because the
not only during portfolio conferences but also throughout
relationship between instruction and assessment will be
the entire school year
strengthened as a consequence of students’ continuing
accumulation of work products in their portfolios
For this reason, Farr strongly prefers the use of working
portfolios1 instead of showcase portfolios2 because he
Ideally, teachers who adopt portfolios in their classrooms
believes that self-evaluation is nurtured more readily in
will make the ongoing collection and evaluation of students’
connection with ongoing reviews of products not intended
work a central—not secondary—focus of the instructional
to impress external viewers
program
For self-evaluation purposes, it is very useful to be able to
Portfolios can be used to assess progress by comparing
compare earlier work with later work. If a student is
early and revised work products. Examples of students’
required to review three versions of his written
work that can be assessed through portfolios are written
composition (a rst draft, a second draft, and a nal draft),
compositions, solutions to mathematics problems, or
self-evaluation can be nurtured by encouraging the student
analyses of social issues. The difference in quality over time
to make comparative judgments of the three compositions
or observable skill improvement should be the result of
based on appropriate evaluative criteria
effective instruction
Contrasts of later versions with earlier versions can be
In portfolio assessment, students’ active role in evaluating
informative from an assessment perspective and, because
their own work is emphasized. These self-evaluations can
students’ self-evaluation is so vital to their future growth,
be discussed with the teacher during one-on-one
from an instructional perspective as well
conferencing

1 Working Portfolios: Ongoing collections of a student’s work samples focused chie y on the improvement, over time, in a student’s self-evaluated skills.

2 Showcase Portfolios: Collections of a student’s “best work”—that is, the work samples deemed to be of the highest quality. Such portfolios are typically
used for celebrating students’ accomplishments with parents, policymakers, and so on.

Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson. Page 1 of 6
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 Prepared by Jean M. Millare for PfEd 311
KEY INGREDIENTS IN CLASSROOM PORTFOLIO
ASSESSMEN
There are many ways to use portfolios in a classroom, but
the following seven-step sequence provides a reasonable
guide for implementing portfolio assessment. Taken
together, these seven activities represent the key
ingredients in classroom-based portfolio assessment.
(1) Make sure your students “own” their portfolios
For portfolios to represent a student’s developing work
accurately, and to nurture the kind of self-evaluation so
crucial if portfolios are to be truly educational, students
must realize that portfolios are collections of their own
work and not just temporary collections of products you
grade in the end. You will probably want to introduce the
idea of portfolio assessment to your students by explaining
the distinctive functions of portfolios in the classroom
(2) Decide on what kinds of work samples to collect
Various kinds of work samples can be included in a
portfolio. Obviously, such products will vary from subject to
subject. In general, a wide variety of work products is
preferable to a limited range of work products. Ideally, you
and your students can collaboratively determine what goes
in the portfolio
(3) Collect and store work samples
Students need to collect work samples as they are created,
place them in a suitable container (a folder or notebook,
for example), and then store the container in a le cabinet,
storage box, or some suitably safe location. You may need
to work individually with your students to help them
decide whether particular products should be placed in
their portfolios. The actual organization of a portfolio’s
contents depends, of course, on the nature of the work
samples being collected
(4) Select criteria by which to evaluate portfolio work
samples
Working collaboratively with students, decide on a set of
criteria by which you and your students can judge the
quality of their portfolio products. Because of the likely
diversity of products in different students’ portfolios, the
identi cation of evaluative criteria will not be a simple task.
At least a rudimentary evaluative criteria should be
identi ed, otherwise, students will nd it dif cult to
Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson.
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PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT
evaluate own efforts and, after that, strive for improvement.
The criteria, once selected, are then described with clarity
(5) Require students to evaluate continually their own
portfolio products.
Using the agreed-on evaluative criteria, be sure students
routinely appraise their own work — holistically, analytically,
or both. Such self-evaluation can be made routine by
requiring each student to complete brief evaluation slips on
which they identify the major strengths and weaknesses of
their product and suggest how it can be improved. Self-
evaluations are dated to keep track of modi cations in self-
evaluation skills, and stapled/clipped to the work product
evaluated
(6) Schedule and conduct portfolio conferences.
Portfolio conferences take time. Yet, these interchange
sessions between teachers and students regarding students’
work are essential in making sure portfolio assessment
ful lls its potential. The conference should not only evaluate
work products but help improve self-evaluation abilities. Try
to hold as many of these conferences as you can. For time
ef ciency, have students prepare for the conference so you
could go straight to topics of greatest concern
(7) Involve parents in the portfolio assessment process
Early in the school year, it is important for parents to
understand the nature (essential qualities/basic features) of
the portfolio assessment process you’ve devised for your
classroom. Encourage parents to periodically review work
samples and self-evaluations of those work samples. The
more active parents become in reviewing their children’s
work, the stronger the message will be to the child that the
portfolio activity is worthwhile
These seven steps re ect only the most important
activities teachers might engage in when creating
assessment programs in their classrooms. Variations are
possible
There’s one situation in which heavy student involvement
in the portfolio process process may not make
instructional sense. This occurs in the early grades when, in
the teacher’s judgment, those early graders are not
developmentally ready for a portfolio self-evaluation. Any
sort of educational assessment should be developmentally
appropriate for the students who are being assessed. Thus,
for students who are in early primary grade levels, a
teacher may decide to use only showcase portfolios to
Page 2 of 6

 Prepared by Jean M. Millare for PfEd 311 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

display a child’s accomplishments. Working portfolios, the reader of the portfolio to gain insights about how the
packed with student-evaluated products, can be done later. learner learns

Key decisions in planning for portfolio assessment (3) Evaluation of student statu
— Primary purpose of portfolio
— Work samples to be included in the portfolio The nal purpose for portfolios is the determination of
whether students have met previously determined quality
levels of performance. For this purpose, greater
>>>PURPOSEFUL PORTFOLIO standardization about what should be included in a
portfolio and how the work samples should be evaluated
Three Chief Functions Underlying Portfolio Assessmen is a must.

(1) Documentation of student progres Usually, teachers select entries for this kind of portfolio.
Great attention is given to scoring to ensure rubrics will
The rst of the three chief purposes of portfolio yield consistent results even if different raters are involved.
assessment is to provide the student, teacher, parents with For portfolios being used to evaluate student status, there
evidence about student growth—or lack of it. These are is usually less need for self-evaluation of entries—unless
the WORKING PORTFOLIOS that provide meaningful such self-evaluations are being evaluated by others
opportunities for self-evaluation by students. Working
portfolios allow for monitoring of the evolving quality of
student efforts, particularly skill mastery Can one portfolio perform all three functions? Somehow

If decisions are to be based on learning, then a plan for Can one portfolio perform all three functions well? No. This
information collection over time must be developed and is because the three functions, although related, are
implemented. The more current any documentation of basically different.
students’ progress is, the more accurate that
documentation is likely to be Therefore, the rst decision a teacher has to make if
implementing portfolio assessment in the classroom is the
(2) Showcasing student accomplishment primary purpose of the portfolios. After that, you can
decide on what they should look like and how students
Portfolios that showcase students’ best work is described should prepare them
as celebration portfolios, which is especially appropriate for
the early grades (Stiggins, 2007) As a teacher, pick your top-priority purpose and then build
your portfolio assessment to satisfy this purpose
To showcase accomplishments, students typically select
their best work and re ect thoughtfully on its quality. >>>WORK-SAMPLE SELECTIO

Showcase portfolio may contain Another key decision when planning for portfolio
A letter of introduction to portfolio reviewer assessment depends on the identi cation of work samples
A table of content to include in the portfolios
Identi cation of the skills or knowledge being
demonstrate Divergency. Entries in the portfolio should show variety in
A representative sample of the student’s best wor work samples. BUT the teacher shouldn’t search for varied
Dates on all entrie kinds of work samples simply for the sake of variety. What’s
The evaluative criteria (or rubric) being use important is that the kinds of work samples to be included
The student’s self-re ection on all entrie should allow you to make valid inferences about the skills
and/or knowledge your students should master.
Student self-re ections are important in showcase
portfolios It’s far better to include a few kinds of inference-
illuminating work samples than to include a galaxy of work
Some portfolio proponents argue that student self- samples, many of which do not contribute to your
evaluation helps the learner to learn better and permits inferences about students’ knowledge or skills

Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson. Page 3 of 6
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 Prepared by Jean M. Millare for PfEd 311 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

A number of portfolio assessment specialists believe that

>>>APPRAISING PORTFOLIO the most important dividend/bene t is the increased
abilities of students to evaluate their own work…
Students’ portfolios are almost always evaluated by the use therefore, nurture self-evaluation growth deliberately
of a scoring rubric, the most important ingredients of through portfolio assessment
which are its evaluative criteria — the factors to be used in
determining the quality of work to be assessed using Installing portfolio as an assessment strategy offers your
portfolio. students and you a way to particularize your evaluation of
each student’s growth over time
Self-evaluation is almost always desirable. Then, students
should have access to, and thoroughly understand, the To use portfolio assessment properly, re ect whether in
rubric that will be used to evaluate their portfolios your own instructional situation, it yields suf cient
educational bene ts to be worth the investment you’ll
For all forms of portfolio assessment, students’ familiarity surely need to make in it
with rubrics is vitally important

Since classroom assessment is supposed to contribute to THE PROS AND CONS OF PORTFOLIO ASSESSMEN
more valid inferences from which better instructional
decisions can be made, the teacher should ask herself: PROS/plusses/payoffs
Have my students’ portfolios signi cantly increased the
accuracy of the inferences I make regarding my students’ (1) Greatest strength — Can be tailored to the individual
skills and knowledge student’s needs, interests, and abilities

(2) Provides a way of documenting and evaluating growth

WHAT DO CLASSROOM TEACHERS REALLY NEED TO happening in a classroom in ways that standardized or
KNOW ABOUT PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT written tests cannot.

The more familiar you are with different kinds of Portfolios have the potential to create authentic portraits
[assessment methods], the more likely you will be able to of what students learn… For portfolios to merge
select a [method] that best provides you with the effectively with instruction, they must have a story to tell—
information you need in order to draw suitable inferences that is of improved student learning
about your students
(3) The self-evaluation it fosters is important in guiding
Portfolios should be a central, not tangential part of what students’ learning over tim
goes on in the classroom, if the goal is to make portfolio
assessment a helpful supplement to the teacher’s ***The personal ownership students experience regarding
instructional program their own work, and the progress they experience, makes
the bene ts outweigh the costs
Primary premise in portfolio assessment:
— a particularized/detailed collection of a student’s
evolving work will allow both the student and you to CONS/minuses
determine the student’s progres
(1) Like other constructed-response measurements, it can
You can’t gauge the student’s progress if you don’t have be dif cult to evaluate — dif cult to come up with
frequent evidence of the student’s efforts consistent evaluations, particularly when the responses
vary from student to student
Educationally unwise to select portfolio assessment as a
one-time measurement approach to deal with short-term Sometimes, scoring guides are too brief or too general that
instructional objective — it makes more sense to select they are almost useless. The evaluative criteria are fairly
some key curricular aims and then monitor this aspect of loose and tend to be interpreted differently by different
the student’s learning throughout the entire school year people. Other times, scoring guides are so detailed and
complicated that they simply overwhelm scorers

Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson. Page 4 of 6
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 Prepared by Jean M. Millare for PfEd 311 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

portfolios in all classrooms for one or more subject areas. Ms.

(2) Portfolio assessment takes time to carry out properly Martinez, an experienced Grade 3 teacher in the school, has
decided to try out portfolios only in mathematics. She admits to
— in class during portfolio conferences and outside of her family (but not to her fellow teachers) that she’s not sure if
class when reviewing portfolios by yourself… Be prepared she’ll be able to use portfolios properly with her students
for the required investment of time
Because she has attempted to follow the curriculum guide, Ms.
There is a need for suf cient training in carrying out Martinez decides to focus on mathematical problem solving and
portfolio assessment properly. Meaningful professional the integration of mathematical understanding with content from
other disciplines. Therefore, she asks her students to include in
development is a must. Teacher learning communities can their portfolios samples of their work in solving quantitative
be a means for continuing sharing of insights and working problems from other subjects. Ms. Martinez poses these
collaboratively on common problems encountered through problems for her third-graders and then requires them to
portfolio assessment prepare an initial solution strategy and to revise that solution at
least twice. Students are told to put all solutions (dated) in their
portfolios
WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH TEACHING Six weeks after the start of school, Ms. Martinez sets up a series
of 15-minute portfolio conferences with her students. During the
PoA almost always fundamentally changes a teacher’s three days on which the portfolio conferences are held, students
approach to instruction who are not involved in a conference move through a series of
learning stations in other subject areas where they usually engage
in peer critiquing of each other’s responses to various kinds of
PoA, if properly focused on helping children improve by practice exercises
being able to evaluate their own work samples, becomes a
continuing and central component of a teacher’s Ms. Martinez learned during the summer workshop that for
instructional program students to bene t the most from portfolios, self-evaluation is
— work samples have to be chose important. So, Ms. Martinez devotes most of her 15-minute
conferences to students’ evaluations of their own work. Although
— scoring rubrics need to be develope she offers some of her own evaluations of most students’ work,
— students need to be taught how to use the rubrics to she usually allows the student’s self-evaluation to take priority
monitor the evolving quality of their effort over her own estimates of a student’s ability to solve each
problem
The rst thing you need to do is decide whether the
knowledge and skills you are trying to have your students Because it will soon be time to give students their 10-week
grades, Ms. Martinez doesn’t know whether to base the grades
master (especially the skills) can be assessed using on her own judgments or on students’ self-evaluations
portfolios
If you were Ms. Martinez, what would you decide to do
Will there be student work samples that — because they ——————————————————————
permit you to make inferences about your students’
evolving skill mastery — could provide the continuing focus
for portfolio assessment SUMMAR

The FIRST BIG QUESTION you need to ask yourself when Portfolios — systematic collections of students’ wor
it comes to portfolio assessment is quite simple: Is this
powerful but time-consuming form of assessment right for Emphasis on self-assessment is highly appropriate for PoA,
what I am trying to teach? particularly in view of the way portfolios can be tailored to
an individual student’s evolving progress.
[When is portfolio assessment appropriate for the
knowledge and skills you are trying to have your students Seven steps as key ingredients for teachers to install and
master? sustain portfolio assessment in the classroom
DECISION TIM 1. Establish student ownershi
—————————————————————— 2. Decide on what work samples to collec
Does Self-Evaluation Equal Self-Grading 3. Collect and store work sample
4. Select evaluative criteri
After a summer schoolwide three-day workshop on the
Instructional Bene ts of Classroom Portfolios, the faculty at
5. Require continual student self-evaluation
Siento Katorse Elementary School have agreed to use student 6. Schedule and conduct portfolio conference

Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson. Page 5 of 6
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 Prepared by Jean M. Millare for PfEd 311 PORTFOLIO ASSESSMENT

7. Involve parents in the portfolio assessment proces

Functions of Po
1. Documentation of student progres
2. Showcasing/exhibiting/displaying student
accomplishment
3. Evaluation of student statu

Teachers should select a primary purpose for PoA

Plusses and minuses of Po

Different kinds of student portfolios serve different

purposes/roles/function

(1) Showcase portfolio — students pick their very best

work to show teacher and parents what they’ve learned;
collections of best work that celebrate students’
achievements; polished nal product

(2) Working portfolios — real emphasis is on getting

students to make progress and to evaluate this progress on
their own… each entry is dated, and with a brief self-
re ectio

——————————————————————
Self-evaluation ability is acquired with practice and
developed with feedback.3 It provides an opportunity for
students to re ect on their own work with the goal of
learning more, making the work better, and thereby
improving the chances for a good grade. In this perspective,
self-assessment is not the same as self-grading. Rather,
students are looking at their work and judging the degree
to which it re ects the goals of the assignment and the
assessment criteria the teacher will be using to evaluate
the work… Self-assessment becomes feedback for oneself
from oneself… “student self-assessment is feasible and
likely to be bene cial if it is employed as a process of
having students critically review their own work with an
eye for improvement.” (p. 172

Andrade, H., and Du, Y. (2007). Student responses to criteria-referenced

self-assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 32(2),
159–18

3 http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/educational-assessment/self-assessment-does-not-necessarily-mean-self-grading/

Reference: Popham, W.J. (2014). Classroom assessment: What teachers need to know. NJ: Pearson. Page 6 of 6
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