Portfolios Plus

This is a courageous manuscript that challenges educators to examine their current thinking about assessment and what they believe about education." Paul Gathercoal, Associate Professor, School of Education, California Lutheran University Thousand Oaks, CA "Will appeal to all educators, particularly to classroom teachers who are searching for portfolio examples. Practitioners will find this book is an excellent guide." Robert B. Amenta, Professor of Education Administration, California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, California Are current assessment practices doing the majority of our students justice? Linda Mabry takes a long hard look at the reality of assessment in education today. Her book is a guide to help you bring your purposes and contexts into focus and design assessment to support and enhance student learning. Discover what kind of assessment is best for your students. This book will help you look at various methods of assessment and the consequences these practices have on your professional relationships with students and colleagues. Mabry makes a strong case for reconsideration of testing assumptions and approaches and their implications. She explores alternatives and compares them to current educational assessments, examining the importance of individualization versus standardized testing. You′ll learn to match purpose to contexts, assessment to curriculum, and theory to practice. Design a custom assessment program individualized to fit your students, school, and community, one that will be enriched by your professional experience and ideas. Make assessment a positive part of the learning process. An excellent resource for students and faculty in school of educational administration, and for principals and administrators. A valuable asset for university, college, school district, and school libraries.

Linda Mabry is a faculty member at Washington State University specializing in program evaluation, student assessment, and research and evaluation methodology. She currently serves as president of the Oregon Program Evaluation Network and on the editorial board for Studies in Educational Evaluation. She has served in a variety of leadership positions for the American Evaluation Association, including the Board of Directors, chair of the Task Force on Educational Accountability, and chair of the Theories of Evaluation topical interest group. She has also served n the Board of Trustees for the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessments and on the Performance Assessment Review Board of New York. She has conducted evaluations for the U.S. Department of Education, National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, the Jacob Javits Foundation, Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Ameritech Corporation, ATT-Comcast Corporation, the New York City Fund for Public Education, the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education, the Chicago Teachers Academy of Mathematics and Science, and a variety of university, state, and school agencies. She has published in a number of scholarly journals and written several books, including Evaluation and the Postmodern Dilemma (1997) and Portfolios Plus: A Critical Guide to Performance Assessment (1999).