Educators in the Coalition of Essential Schools share a commitment to the idea that they need to assess students’ progress to help students keep learning and to help teachers keep getting smarter about how to teach. There is also a large degree of consensus among Coalition educators that standardized tests cannot be the most important element in an assessment system-because
Coalition teachers require multidimensional exhibitions of skills and understanding to know that students have met our standards.Coalition students need opportunities to demonstrate their learning over the course of months and years. Setting up such assessments demands time, deep connections and professional competence. We know that standardized tests provide only a limited opportunity for students to demonstrate what they know. Linda
Elizabeth Herbert provides a nuanced analysis of how creating student portfolios affects students, teachers, parents and a school community. The Power of Portfolios presents Herbert’s learning about portfolios-inspired by Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences work-as a portfolio itself, distillations of lessons learned and questions raised in seventeen years as principal of the kindergarten through fourth grade Crow Island School in Winnetka,