Discusses the uses of teaching portfolios, collections of documents, and reflections designed to assist both administrators and teachers to determine the scope and quality of teacher performance; and reviews pros and cons in their use. Suggests methods for developing portfolios and briefly describes successful portfolio projects. (MAB)

Maintains that teacher-based assessment can be a powerful tool. Defines "informed" assessment, describes its features, and discusses conditions that must occur if teacher-based assessment is to reach its full potential. Discusses strategies that help teachers make day-to-day assessment more meaningful and credible. (SR)

The Service Delivery Assessment (SDA) model is a human services evaluation tool which offers a viable alternative to more traditional approaches and is appropriate for small local evaluations as well as large national studies. There are five phases to an SDA study: assignment, pre-assessment, design, analysis, and communication of the findings.…

Stake's concept of responsive evaluation is designed to provide various decision makers with the kind of information desired and in the form most helpful for making decisions. Compared with formal research procedures, this approach has both advantages and disadvantages. It may also provide a valuable supplement to formal evaluation. (CTM)

Judgmental Policy Analysis was used to form models representing the judgmental policies of 73 educational personnel as they rated 16 programs in which characteristics were varied. Although the judges varied in criteria used and in consistency, the results illustrate potential uses of a methodology for studying the judgmental evaluative process.…

Examples of possible methods for unobtrusively evaluating student progress through real problem solving outcomes without formal testing are illustrated. These methods include the use of interviews, artifacts, observations, I learned statements, checklists, flow of discussion charts, and self-awareness exercises. (MN)

Noting that the term "assessment" sounds formal and institutional and frequently generates fear and anxiety, this book presents 14 essays that demonstrate that assessment can help students, teachers, and administrators in writing across the curriculum (WAC) programs learn about what they are doing well and about how they might do better. The first…

Describes the development of an informal syllabication instrument that has proven useful in determining the strengths and weaknesses of secondary school students' word attack abilities. (FL)

The validity of two subjective approaches to judging in synchronized swimming were examined through a multitrait-multimethod matrix. Results indicated that judging panels tended not to differentiate between execution and content scores. (Author/JKS)

Describes minimal requirements for functional intervention-based eligibility assessment of preschool children with possible developmental disabilities. The methodology is intended to help derive logical, natural, and meaningful discrepancies in behavior or performance through contextual analysis of child-related, environmental, and instructional…

This article discusses the development of an assessment instrument for measuring handwriting ability and determining assistive technology needs. It includes a sample needs assessment that could be used to assist in the matching of a device to an individual who requires modification for the purpose of graphic output. (CR)

Colleges and universities typically record student achievement through a system of number and grades. This system of documenting student learning is based on the assumption that students progressively carry with them and build on their learning as they advance through courses. However, learning is more than an aggregation of courses and credits.…

Existing research indicates that there is a disproportionate number of students with cultural and linguistic differences, English Language Learners (ELL), who are misidentified as learning disabled when their problems are due to cultural and/or linguistic differences. As a consequence, these students do not receive appropriate services. With the…

To assess the effectiveness of various composition evaluation methods, a study asked two freshman English classes to respond to three questionnaires on the writing of personal essays and methods of evaluation they had experienced. Responses indicated that all students had a fear of having their essays evaluated. Evaluation methods considered a…