Portfolio Assessment

Benefits of Portfolio Assessment

Portfolio assessment is an alternative to the use of traditional grading systems and standardized testing procedures, which may not provide teachers with a clear understanding of students' accomplishments and, often, are not directly linked to instruction. The development of portfolio assessment resulted from concerns surrounding traditional assessment procedures and addressed the need for an assessment method capable of demonstrating what individual students know and what they can accomplish. Traditional assessment practices measure students' ability at one point in time, are usually conducted outside the context of classroom instruction, and may not capture the full range of students' abilities. In contrast, portfolio assessment measures students' ability over time, is embedded within instructional activities, and captures multiple facets of students' performance across diverse skill areas.

There are multiple advantages to portfolio assessment, especially for instructional planning and student progress monitoring. First, portfolio assessment links assessment information directly to teaching and instructional outcomes. Portfolio artifacts are authentic examples of classroom work, not divorced from instructional activities as some test items can be. Portfolio assessment is viewed as embedded assessment, that is, assessment in which the assessment tasks are actually part of instruction. As such, portfolio assessment is an effective method to bring assessment in line with instructional goals and provides teachers with valuable information on which to base their instructional decisions.

Second, because the products and evidence are collected over time, portfolios serve as a record of students' growth and progress. Portfolio assessment is longitudinal and continuous, providing both formative (ongoing) and summative (culminating) opportunities for monitoring students' progress toward achieving essential learning outcomes. It provides a comprehensive body of student work that is used to evaluate performance over time.

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