Portfolios assessment in the reading writing classroom of

2.2 Students are not engaged in self-assessment.
We believe that we need to move beyond current testing practices and to do so educators need to consider the desired outcome from the assessment procedures utilized. In other words, how might assessment become useful to teachers and students, better inform teachers and students about achieve ment, progress, and effort, and fuel teacher and student instruc tional collaborations?
As we take an appraisal of assessment it is important to be clear about what we need from our assessment efforts. 1. It is important for teachers to take a lead in being able to report to parents, district administrators, board members, and state departments valid information about how stu dents are achieving and performing over time. Assessment in today's society should provide accountability to involved and interested stakeholders.
Assessment should provide the information that is needed to pursue ongoing curriculum development that is respon sive to student needs and therefore, provides directions for instructional decision making.
Assessment should consider definitions of literacy, includ ing the range of different kinds of reading and writing ex periences, as well as their facets. Rather than limiting as sessment in reading and writing to a restricted set of subskills or outcomes, our view of what is measured and how it is measured should broaden assessment possibili ties.
Assessment practices should involve the students. If we want students to develop into independent thinkers and successful performers they must have the skills, knowl edge, and confidence to evaluate their own processes and products.
Through an effective assessment program teachers should grow in their knowledge about how children develop as readers and writers. Through this understanding, teachers can also continually evaluate their own performance. Teach ers can ask themselves questions that reveal if what they are doing instructionally is truly making a difference in their student's growth in reading and writing. Procedures for summarizing and reporting student per formance should be consistent with what we purport to be measuring and developing. Current methods of practices for reporting literacy achievement are oftentimes scores or grades that do not translate into practice.
Assessment should provide all interested parties with infor mation that illuminates the student growth that occurs as a result of collaborative contacts with teachers. It should also facilitate learning, appropriate instruction and students' aware ness of their own strengths and needs as readers and writers and enhance teacher and curriculum development.
The following characteristics summarize what we believe to be essential features of a classroom based assessment program that respects readers and writers in the process of learning and that meet the goals we have for assessment.
Assessment is based on what the child actually does. Student work and process are observed and.analyzed to provide a rich view of progress, achievement, effort, strate gles, and versatility.
Assessment addresses the reading and writing experiences
in which students are engaged. 3. Classroom assessment procedures should describe clearly and accurately how students do on a variety of tasks over an extended period of time. Decisions about students' strengths and needs are derived as a result of analyzing multiple samples of student work that have been collected during the course of the year and show the students' versatility.
Effective classroom assessment programs are designed to include the students as active participant in forming the reading and writing tasks, in developing assessment crite ria, and in assessing their own effort, progress, achievement, attitude, and goal attainment. 5. An assessment program should be multifaceted. There should be provisions to assess more than just the final products. Assessment should focus on achievement, process, and quality of self-assessment.
Assessment is continuous and inseparable from instruc tion. It is an interactive and collaborative process in which information is collected in natural classroom instructional encounters (individual, small group, and whole group). Assessment should have a reciprocal relationship with the nature and goals of schools. That is, assessment should be informed by the nature and goals of schools and, in turn, inform these goals.
A yearly assessment plan guides the timing and use of a variety of assessment procedures. These procedures should work together to form a composite. It is likely that there are regular assessments that occur weekly, quarterly, and yearly. These assessments may be varied and serve slightly different purposes.
Assessment strengthens teacher's and student's knowl edge. Assessment should contribute to a teacher's and student's understanding of themselves and each other. Teachers and students should find assessment empower ing rather than beleaguering. Teachers and students should grow in their ability to make insightful analysis of the data gathered. Record keeping and collections of work samples by both teachers and students provide the systematic information that facilitates communication
The teacher is an expert evaluator, recognized and supported:The teacher not only knows the nature of the learner's reading and writing but provides first-hand evi dence of progress and achievement. The teacher recognizes patterns by relating what readers and writers are doing and thinking to knowledge of the learner and understanding of literacy. The teacher has the opportunity to observe the learner first-hand across a variety of situations including those in which learners are interested, have varying degrees of background knowledge, interact with others, or proceed independently.The teacher can explore the environments and situations that enhance learning.
The teacher assesses what students have achieved in terms of effort, improvement, and process. The teacher assesses the learner's literacy development in the context of what learners are doing. The teacher pursues collaborative assessment with the learner, as well as the learner's ongoing assess ment and development of self-assessment strate gies.
The students' ability to assess themselves is viewed as a measure of how testing and assessment have a meaning ful, ongoing, and working relationship with teaching.
Parental and other stakeholders' involvement in the as sessment program is vital to supporting the learner's ongoing literacy development and the legitimization of assessment practices consistent with what literacy is and literacy instruction should be.

The subsequent chapters in this book describe how reading and writing portfolios fit into and facilitate a sound assessment program. We believe portfolios are a means of providing the depth and breadth of information to help teachers to put into practice a sound theory of assessment in their classrooms.