Guides Non-Classroom Use (055)

This paper offers suggestions for using portfolios to assess teacher performance. Key policy decisions that should be addressed prior to preparation of the portfolios include purpose, domains, audience, administrative matters, technical issues, and legal issues. After these policy decisions have been made, guidelines for portfolio design--its compilation, contents, and the scoring process--are described. Portfolios reflect teachers ' professional development over time, provide supporting documentation, offer a tool for self-evaluation and reflection, and can be tailored to assess broad or specific teaching assignments. However, they are costly and time-consuming, may not represent teachers ' work, are vulnerable to cheating and plagiarism, and may give teachers who have access to Duperior resources an unfair advantage over others. A conclusion is to use portfolios in conjunction with other assessment methods and to start with caution, preferably using the portfolio as a professional development tool first. A table provides examples of items to be included in a duties-based teacher-evaluation system. (LMI