Portfolios can and do include video and audio tapes, reading samples, student auditions, various genres in states of semicompletion, graded tests, lists of printed material read and reactions to those works, journals, goals, lists, descriptions of service to the community, organizations the student has joined, awards, and other examples of the student's growth in reading, writing, thinking, expressing, living, and learning. Portfolios are an authentic component that can be added to the whole assessment process. Longitudinal growth and progress can be reviewed and observed. In addition, when used properly, they encourage self-reflection and advance the notion that learning happens over time. Portfolios also promote peer evaluation and the use of mentor reviewing and assessing with the teachers and students.
Students have more involvement in their own learning.
They are a component of the assessment cycle, and not an end in themselves as Mr. Berger's Commentary suggests. Though the Commentary raises issues about portfolios that need further study, it would be folly as well to return to the days of using a summary test and other standardized measures as the total means of assessing student learning. No one feels that portfolios are an answer to educational problems in and of themselves. But portfolio assessment injects greater authenticity into much of what we are doing in schools. Portfolios provide us with a means of better serving our students by engaging them in the learning process with the evaluator, rather than simply giving them tests that are done to them.