Jenny Rose J. Pamat Dr. Yolanda S.

Quijano MaEd-SPED SPED 505 Psycho-diagnostic Assessment of Exceptional Children and youth Portfolio in Special Education What is a portfolio? A student portfolio is a systematic collection of student work and related material that depicts a student's activities, accomplishments, and achievements in one or more school subjects. The collection should include evidence of student reflection and self-evaluation, guidelines for selecting the portfolio contents, and criteria for judging the quality of the work. The goal is to help students assemble portfolios that illustrate their talents, represent their writing capabilities, and tell their stories of school achievement... (Venn, 2000, pp. 530-531) Two Types of Portfolios: Process and product portfolios represent the two major types of portfolios. A process portfolio documents the stages of learning and provides a progressive record of student growth. A product portfolio demonstrates mastery of a learning task or a set of learning objectives and contains only the best work... Teachers use process portfolios to help students identify learning goals, document progress over time, and demonstrate learning mastery... In general, teachers prefer to use process portfolios because they are ideal for documenting the stages that students go through as they learn and progress (Venn, 2000, p. 533). Steps in the Portfolio Assessment Process First, the teacher and the student need to clearly identify the portfolio contents, which are samples of student work, reflections, teacher observations, and conference records. Second, the teacher should develop evaluation procedures for keeping track of the portfolio contents and for grading the portfolio... Third, the teacher needs a plan for holding portfolio conferences, which are formal and informal meetings in which students review their work and discuss their progress. Because they encourage reflective teaching and learning, these conference are an essential part of the portfolio assessment process (Venn, 2000, p. 540). Advantages of Portfolio Assessment

Promoting student self-evaluation, reflection, and critical thinking. Measuring performance based on genuine samples of student work. Providing flexibility in measuring how students accomplish their learning goals. Enabling teachers and students to share the responsibility for setting learning goals and for evaluating progress toward meeting those goals. Giving students the opportunity to have extensive input into the learning process. Facilitating cooperative learning activities, including peer evaluation and tutoring, cooperative learning groups, and peer conferencing. Providing a process for structuring learning in stages.

Providing opportunities for students and teachers to discuss learning goals and the progress toward those goals in structured and unstructured conferences. Enabling measurement of multiple dimensions of student progress by including different types of data and materials. (Venn, 2000, p. 538)

Disadvantages of Portfolio Assessment

Requiring extra time to plan an assessment system and conduct the assessment. Gathering all of the necessary data and work samples can make portfolios bulky and difficult to manage. Developing a systematic and deliberate management system is difficult, but this step is necessary in order to make portfolios more than a random collection of student work. Scoring portfolios involves the extensive use of subjective evaluation procedures such as rating scales and professional judgment, and this limits reliability. Scheduling individual portfolio conferences is difficulty and the length of each conference may interfere with other instructional activities.

Definition of Portfolio Assessment Students usually have some hand in choosing the work that goes into their portfolio. Portfolio Assessment is a term used to describe a collection (or portfolio) of a student's work collected over time, so that teachers, school administrators, and parents can view a student's progression in a given content area (such as math or reading). Students usually have some hand in choosing the work that goes into their portfolio, often choosing work that is most representative of their abilities. Reading Assessment Definition Portfolio Definition Significance Portfolio Assessment grew out of the desire to find another way to measure academic success other than standardized, norm-referenced, multiple-choice style tests. While a standardized test can measure what a given student knows "at the moment", portfolio assessment can measure a student's cognitive process. Advocates of portfolio assessment often point to the disconcerting trend that, given the high stakes of standardized, and more recently, state testing, curriculum is often more geared to the test rather than providing opportunities for broad educational experiences. These advocates believe that portfolio assessment provides a more comprehensive adjunct to traditional forms of testing. Purpose Portfolio Assessment allows teachers to witness students' achievements in ways that standardized or state testing often cannot, such as the development of skills and strategies, and the cognitive process. Students are encouraged to journal about their work in their portfolios, to choose

work that shows evidence of their progress, and to have periodic conferences with the teacher to discuss the contents of their portfolios. Therefore, portfolios also encourage students to become partners in their academic success. Types Some teachers have their students maintain a variety of portfolios. Some of these might include Progress portfolios A progress portfolio contains examples of a variety of a student's work and, as the name implies, is used to assess progress over time. A progress portfolio provides visual evidence of student's cognitive growth in a given content area. Showcase portfolios A showcase portfolio contains examples of what the student considers his or her best work, often including rough drafts and final products to show the student's process. The material included in a showcase portfolio is usually completed work taken from a progress portfolio. Assessment Unlike other measures of a student's abilities, a portfolio focuses more on performance than an overall isolated result. For example, a teacher can view a math worksheet where a student answered six out 10 questions correctly. With this very basic information, the teacher can glean only a limited amount of information. With portfolio assessment, however, a teacher can see how the student has progressed and mastered essential concepts, especially since much of the work included in a student's portfolio requires that a student show his or her work. Using the above example, a teacher may learn that those six incorrect answers were the result of a small error in calculation, rather than an overall weakness in the specific concept. The teacher is then able to give more effective, targeted instruction to the student. Students Portfolio Assessment is a way for students and teachers to work together toward specific outcomes. Much of the work in a portfolio isn't graded using a traditional grading system of A-F, but rather a rubric or scoring guide that assigns a given value to a particular characteristic of the work. For writing, the categories might include legibility, spelling, grammar, and sentence structure. For math, the categories might include demonstrating an understanding of the concept, neatness of work, the inclusion of all calculations in an organized, step-by-step manner, and an explanation of the problem-solving process. Students are aware of these rubrics and the standards against which their work will be judged. Educators believe that if students understand what is expected of them, they will be able to perform at a higher level.