Assessment of Student Learning 2

Module 4: Portfolio Assessment & Grading and Reporting System

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Module Title: Portfolio Assessment & Grading and Reporting System

Course Title: Assessment of Learning 2
Course Number: Ed 107
Total Learning Time: 12 hours
Prerequisites: Ed 106

Overview:

Assessment as part of instruction provides useful information on student learning

outcomes. In recent years, another technique of assessing achievement merged as an alternative assessment
over the use of conventional forms of testing. This method is portfolio assessment, which has captured the
attention of many educator, as it has become an important addition to the repertoire of performance
assessment.
Another important things to learn in this module is the basic concept of grading and reporting.

Learning Outcomes

After going through this unit, you will be able to:

 explain nature of portfolio assessment;
 design and evaluate portfolio assessment in the classroom; and
 discuss the concept of grading and reporting;

Indicative Content
 Nature of portfolio assessment;
 Portfolio as an assessment tool;
 Designing and evaluating portfolio assessment in the classroom; and
 Grading and reporting;

Discussion:

The practice of developing portfolio has been widely used in a number of fields for
many years such as in architecture, advertising, art, and photography. This includes the person's best work. In
the field of education, portfolio has become widely used in the basic and tertiary level, which is utilized as one
of the many procedures for formally assessing the students. It has become very useful in developing creativity
and talents of the students, allowing them to support the claim that have achieved learning outcomes.

In the previous chapters, we have presented and described a variety of assessment techniques and
shown you how these are being used in the classroom setting. A key foundational consideration for this chapter
is how portfolio helps the learners to analyze and reflect about their growth as an educated individual.
Moreover, this chapter helps you achieve skills related to the planning and development of student portfolio.

1. Purposes

Portfolio is a systematic process and purposeful collection of student work to

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document the student learning progress, efforts, and achievement towards the attainment of learning outcomes.
It is a systematic process that follows a well-organized collection of products of student work. There are
guidelines which are given to be satisfied by the students for the purpose of continuous evaluation and
reflection on their work. Moreover, portfolio has a clear reason why students' work must be presented and
serves its purpose as well.

It is a purposeful, organized, collection of evidence that demonstrates a person's

knowledge, skills, abilities, or disposition. The term portfolio implies that from a larger set of evidence or
artifact, a portable subset of these artifacts is collected and displayed to another because they tell a specific
story (Musial, 2009).

Moreover, Borich and Kubiszyn (2003) defined portfolio as a planned collection of learner achievement
that documents what a student has accomplished and the steps taken to get there. The collection represents a
collaborative effort among teacher and learner, to decide on portfolio purpose, content, and evaluation criteria.

This has become a turning point of using portfolio as an alternative assessment tool other than
traditional testing. Presented on the next page are the differences in Assessment Outcomes between
portfolios and standard testing practices.

Differences in Assessment Outcomes between

Portfolios and Standardized Testing Practices

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Portfolios contain relevant items from many different sources such as composition of students in the
form of essay, reports, stories; presentation such as observations research investigation, and projects; narrative
and anecdotal records; rating scales, rubrics, self-reflection and checklists; visual arts such as photofolio,
drawings, paintings; performances as product, group work; and processes such as how-your work problems,
stages of writing a poem or a song.

As utilized in the classroom setting, portfolios have the same basic purpose and principle to collect
pieces of students' performances or products that show accomplishment or improvement overtime. These may
be used depending on the purposes and foci of the assessment to be measured. Thus, teachers should be guided
with the specific purposes in the process of collection.

1.1 Why Use Portfolio?

Portfolios can be used for many purposes. The utilization of portfolio should
be identified before the collection of the work. Johnson and Johnson (2002) gave a comprehensive discussion
on the uses of portfolio, viz:

1. Portfolios give students the opportunity to direct their own learning. Students
can:

a) Document their efforts, achievements, development, and growth in knowledge,

skills, expressions, and attitudes.

b) Use a variety of learning styles, modalities, and intelligences.

c) Assess their own learning and decide which items best represent their
achievement and growth.

d) Set their future learning goals. With these, portfolios make the students as part of the assessment process
by requiring them to reflect and analyze their own work.

2. Portfolios can be used to determine students' level of achievement. Portfolios allow students to present a
holistic view of their academic achievements, skills, and outcomes, Portfolios allow students to present their
work over a period of time and
show their progress in achieving learning outcomes.

3. Portfolios can be used to understand how students think, reason, organize,

investigate, and communicate. Portfolios can provide insight into students'
reasoning and intellectual competencies by documenting students' progression of
thought and work in achieving their learning goals.

4. Portfolios can be used to communicate student efforts, progress toward

accomplishing learning goals, and accomplishments. Portfolios allow students to
present their work as a whole in relation to standards and criteria to peers, teachers,
parents, college admission officers, and so forth.

5. Portfolios can be used to evaluate and improve curriculum and instruction. Portfolios provide a broad view
on the effectiveness of the curriculum and instruction by allowing teachers to improve and enhance their
instructional methods and curriculum materials.
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Basically, one big contribution of portfolio is to give the students the chance to reflect and revisit on
their performances overtime. Life in school is an on-going process submitting paper works, productions, and
performances. Each day, students experience a variety of school tasks which measure the different learners'
cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. Thus, collecting the students' works retain all these experiences
for subsequent reflection and analysis.

1.2 Characteristics

Learning outcomes define what to include and how to utilize portfolio. There should be a clear reason
of what to include and how portfolio is to be utilized. Purposes and targets must he constructively aligned to
the teaching and learning activities and assessment as well. Below illustrates an example of portfolio that
reflects student achievement in a particular subject area.

There should be a systematic and organized collection of the students' work. Gathering of pieces of
work should make a sample of the student works and not as exhaustive collection. In basic education, portfolio
is being collected at the end of the quarter for teacher's assessment and evaluation.

Portfolios typically identify students' strengths. These provide students with

opportunity to show what they can do. Students are encouraged to submit examples of their best work. A
student's deficiencies are addressed in terms of new goals for the students rather than inadequacies in current
performance. These also encourage students to become reflective learners and to develop skills in evaluating
the strengths and weaknesses of their work

Portfolio assessment actively involves students in evaluation process. Student-reflection and self
evaluation develop students' awareness in their own progress and performance in the classroom. With this,
there should be pee-established guidelines for what to be included and appropriate criteria for evaluating
students' product.

Lastly, portfolio assessment facilitates communication of student's achievement to others. This provides
an opportunity to have a dialogue from their teacher and with classmates and develop as well the social skills

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of the students. The students can also utilize portfolio to show others what has been achieved. It is encouraged
to conduct portfolio conferences between the students and teachers, With this, portfolio can provide teachers
and students with opportunities to collaborate and reflect on student progress.

2. Types of Portfolio

There are different types of portfolios you will encounter on assessing the performance approach in
your classroom. This is depending on the purpose and context of the portfolio which are aligned to the learning
competencies of the course of study. The following are the emerging types of portfolio used in the teaching and
learning assessment.

2.1 Showcase Portfolio. This shows the best of the students' best work. This type of portfolio is based on the
students' personal criteria rather than the criteria of their teacher Students select their best work and reflect
thoughtfully on its quality. This also shows the uniqueness of students' work that individual profiles emerge.
Stiggins (2007) described this portfolio as celebration portfolios and contends
that this type of portfolio is especially appropriate for early ages. Mcmillan (2007) pointed out that this
portfolio encourages self-reflection and self-evaluation, but makes scoring more difficult and time consuming
because of the unique structure
and content of each portfolio.

2.2 Documentation Portfolio. This portfolio displays changes and accomplishments related to academic
performance over time. The assembled work sample is to provide evidence about the student growth which
also provides meaningful opportunities for self-evaluation of the students. As a scrapbook of information, this
may include observations, checklist and rating scales and selections by both the teachers and students.
Interactive assessment between the teacher and students provides an opportunity to communicate the strengths
and needed improvements
which also clarifies the accomplishment of students through student and teacher
conference.

2.3. Process Portfolio. This shows the steps and/or the results of a completed project or task as the primary
goal of this portfolio. This is very useful because the final product does not always show the skills and
knowledge that the student used in an effort to complete the project. By asking students to provide evidence of
their work on the way, teachers can see both strengths and weaknesses in the thinking
eiole ss and the skills students used (Musial, 2009).

2.4. Product Portfolio. The product portfolio is similar to the process portfolio except its focus is on the end
product rather than on the process in which the product was developed. In this type of portfolio, there is a little
or no information about the that was used in crafting the product. On the other hand, this type of portfolio
contains the final product as well as detailed explanations of each part of the final product.

2.5 Standard-Based Portfolio. This collects evidence that links student achievement
to particular learning standards. It focuses on specific standards that are predetermined by the teacher and
discussed to the students at the start of the school year. Students will gather evidence of accomplishments for
each of the standards and present these output clusters that relate to the standards given.

3. Elements of Portfolio

The contents of portfolio may be determined by the students who decide what to include in their
portfolio; the cooperative learning group, their classmates who can recommend what to include in the portfolio;

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and the teacher, school or the division who can specify work samples and components to be included in the
portfolio, it could be an essay on photograph, and other documents which strengthen the students' learning
outcomes.

Below Illustrates an example of the best works portfolio in the different field of studies.

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But generally, portfolio has its distinct elements which are expected and included from the outputs of
the students, viz:

1. Cover Sheet. This creatively includes the nature of the student's (or group's) work and could be in a
form of a letter. It also reflects the progress of the learners as it summarizes the evidence of student's learning
and progress. The table below shows sample portfolio cover sheet.

Final Portfolio

Name/Group______________________________ Date: _______________

Grade/Year Level:__________________________ Section: _____________

Subject/Course:____________________________

Purpose:__________________________________

Type of Portfolio: __________________________

Entries Scores Comments/Suggestions

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

Total Grade

Recommendations:

Suggested Future Goals:

Final Portfolio Grade: ______________________

2. Table of contents. This includes the title of each work sample and its page number.

3. Work samples. These are entries which are to be included in the portfolio which
can be categorized as core (samples which are needed to include) and optional (students preference on what to
include). The core are the basic elements required for each students and serves as basis for decision in
assessing the student's work.
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On the other hand, the optional entries allow the folder to represent creativity and uniqueness of each student.
In the introduction of the work samples, it is a must to include the rationale, explaining what work samples are
included, why each one is significant, and how they all fit together in a holistic view of the student's (or group's
work).

4. Dates of all sample works to facilitate evidence of growth overtime.

5. Drafts of the written products, or even the seminal attempts in writing the write ups for the portfolio and the
revised version based on the corrected versions.

6. Self-assessment. This is written by the student or the group members which could be in terms of self-
reflection and analysis or a form of insights. Teacher may include questions which can facilitate the assessment
of the students.

7. Future goals. This is based on the student's (or group's) current achievements, interest, and progress. This
may came from the teacher, cooperative learning groups, and other interested parties such as the parents.

Designing and Evaluating Portfolio Assessment in the Classroom

After knowing the nature of portfolio assessment, its purposes, types and components. We need to
clarify the steps for designing and evaluating portfolio as an assessment tool. The foregoing discussion
illustrates the general procedure that you may use in crafting and implementing portfolio assessment in your
classroom which reveals great learning outcomes on students.

1. Steps for Developing Portfolio Assessment

Designing a portfolio assessment requires some advance and careful planning. It begins with a clear
idea about the purpose of the assessment. The following steps provide a general directions for developing
portfolio assessment.

1.1 Identify Overall Purpose and Focus

The design and use of portfolio begins with a clear description of your purpose and focus. The
questions, "Why do I want a portfolio?" and "What learning targets and curriculum goals will it serve?"
sharpen the focus of identifying the purpose and focus of portfolio. With these, you can clearly identify why
you want your students to create a portfolio. Below are
fist of questions on how to prepare and use portfolio.
Portfolios may be used to assess understanding but are ideal for assessing product, Skill, and reasoning
targets. This is especially true for multi-dimensional skills such as writing, reading, and problem solving that
are continually improved and demonstrated through products. With extensive self-reflection, critical thinkìng is
an important target.
Students also develop metacognitive and decision-making skills. As with other performance
assessments, portfolios generally are not very efficient for assessing knowledge targets (McMillan, 2007).
It is important to distinguish between learning targets for individual work samples and the content of
the portfolio as a whole. The targets that reflect all content tends to be broader and general, such as
"development as a reader," "adapts writing style to different purposes."
The present K to 12 Curriculum provides learning targets which need to be achieved in the form of
content and performance standards. Thus, the nature of using portfolio assessment from the importance and
focus of the learning targets. It necessitates that portfolio matches with the learning standards and goals.
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1.2 Identify the Physical Structure

Once the purpose and targets have been clarified, we need to think of the physical structure of the
portfolio. Some practical questions affect the successful use of portfolio in your classroom:
 What it will look like?
 Where will the students place the outputs?
 What type of container is appropriate?
 Do they need file folders? clear book? plastic bins?
 How are the materials to be organized - categorically, numerically, alphabetically, by subject area or in
other ways?
 Where can students store the portfolios for easy access?
If students cannot manage and access their materials affectively, they will become discouraged. You
may need your original intentions based on the answer to practical considerations. Choices of products and
work outputs influence students on what to include in their portfolio.
1.3 Determine the Appropriate Organization and Sources of Content
The content of portfolio consists of entries (student products and activity records) which provides
assessment information about the content and processes identified in the dimensions to be assessed. These
naturally are artifacts which are derived from the different activities. The range of samples is extensive and
must be determined to some extent by the subject matter and the instruction as presented in the table below.

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Select the organizational entries of portfolio that will allow the students to meet the
purpose of portfolio. If your target is to show performance product, select output oriented
tasks. If you need to provide feedback to students on the procedures they use in putting
together a report, include a summary of that process as part of the portfolio. McMillan (2007)
pointed out to use work samples that capitalize on the advantages of portfolios, such as
flexibility, individuality, and authenticity.
The categories or type of entries should consider the content and process dimension it assess the
minimum and maximum number of entries per category. Make sure that fully represent the students' attainment
or growth and learning progress. This allows variation so that students can show individual work. This often
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means giving students choices and potentials about what they want to include in their portfolio entries.
it is best also to determine the types of work samples to be included in the portfolio
he same Like that instructional activities are developed. Products and performances that
result from instructional activities often provide useful work samples in portfolios.

1.4. Determine Student Reflection Guidelines

Before implementing your portfolio assessment plan, establish guidelines to help
students self-reflect along the way. With this, students will develop greater ownership of the
of the processes and will have experience in working collaboratively with you as their teacher.

1.5 Identify and Evaluate Scoring Criteria

After determining the student reflection guidelines, the next step is to establish the
scoring criteria you will use in evaluating student performance. By working on the student criteria, students
will develop greater ownership of the process and will have experience in working cooperatively and
collaboratively with you as a teacher.
However, as the facilitator of learning, you are responsible to ensure the reliability
and high quality of scoring criteria. The students should be informed also on how you will
evaluate their portfolios. This can be done by sharing the scoring criteria with with your students so they can
ask questions, give their suggestions and insights.

1.6. Communicate the Results of Portfolio Evaluation

The final step in implementing portfolio assessment is to conduct a conference with
each student to review its contents, the students' reflections, and assessment of the individual
output: Give your students guidelines for these conferences so that they can prepare some
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questions ahead of time and allow the students to give their views and insights during the
conference. As a result, this serves as an avenue to determine the strengths and limitations
of portfolio for plan of action formulation.

2. Portfolio Evaluation

2. 1 Student Evaluation

One advantage of portfolio assessment is allowing the students to revisit, reflect, and
evaluate their own work. This allows them to practice critiquing and conceptualizing the quality of their work
based on the criteria performance. This also provides an opportunity for students to become better achievers as
they learn to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses.
Teacher as a model should be the first person to demonstrate the skills in evaluating and critiquing
portfolio. Once the students understand the process and the principle of evaluating, they can start to engage
with their own reflection and establish a comfortable, confident and reliable analysis and critique of their own
work. Some questions can be asked to facilitate student self-reflection for individual work which give insights
into how students have been reaching the learning targets:
 Why did you select this piece of writing?
 What did you learn from the selection?
 Can you identify your strengths and weaknesses?
 What problems have you encountered in doing the task?
 Which is the most satisfying experience?
 What are your insights after reading the poem?
 Is your best work?
 What kind of work would you like to do in the future?

2.2 Teacher Evaluation

Evaluating a portfolio involves making judgments about students' outputs. The teacher
can use numerical scores to summarize judgment or qualitative system. Scoring needs to be reliable and
should not be affected by inconsistencies not related to the qualities being judged.
As a rule of thumb, it is important to remember that the purpose of portfolio is to assess the students'
outcomes of the instructional goals. The samples of entries are indicators whether students have achieved
the goals of instruction which are evaluated based on the portfolio's entire content, structure, and
individual entries.
In most of the classroom situations, the teacher is both the observer and the rater. If there are some
important instructional decisions to be made, additional raters must be considered in order to make scoring
more fair.
2.3 Student-Teacher Conference
As mentioned in the steps in developing portfolio assessment, the final step is to
conduct a conference with each student to review the contents, reflections, and evaluation. It should be
scheduled throughout the year which provides important link between the students and teachers. Your students
can be responsible for conducting the conference and this will serve as a motivating force for the learners to
produce excellent portfolio in the future.
McMillan (2007) pointed out that students need to compare their reflections with your evaluations and
make plans for subsequent work. Although weaknesses and areas for improvement need to be covered,
emphasize students' progress and achievement as well.
One way or another, this also provides an excellent means of communicating with parents The work
outputs and reflections of the students can be a sort of window into what is happening within the classroom as
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parents see the different aspects of their children's experiences in the school. As a tripartite communication
between the parents, teachers and students, portfolio assessment provides framework for meaningful three-way
discussion of the progress,achievement, and limitations.
After the portfolios are complete, it is a good idea to have an exhibition of portfolios and/or student-led
parent-teacher conferences, in which students present their portfolios to their parents.

Grading and Reporting

Assessment of learning during instruction and after instruction may be achieved in

a number of ways. One of the challenges in grading is that of summarizing the variety of
collected information from different types of assessment and come up with a standardized
numerical grade or descriptive letter rating or brief report.
The guiding premises in developing grading and reporting system are provided below:
1. The primary goal of grading and reporting is communication.
2. Grading and reporting are integral parts of the instructional process.
3. Good reporting is based on good evidence
4. Changes in grading and reporting are best accomplished through the development
of a comprehensive reporting system.
In developing and implementing the grading and reporting systems, these premises
must be taken into consideration to have a meaningful output and help in the attainment of
the student learning objectives, to which the assessment objectives cascaded.
1. K to 12 Grading of Learning Outcomes

The K to 12 curriculum have specific assessment requirements and design catering to

the delivery modes of learning, i.e., the formal education and alternative learning system. The K to 12
assessment is learner-centered and carefully considers its learning environment system. The 21st century skills
such as research, analytical/critical, practical and creative are part of the indicators included in the K to 12
assessment. Both cognitive and non-cognitive skills which includes values, motivation, attitude, behavior traits,
and interpersonal relations are part of the assessment.

Formative assessment (assessment FOR learning) is given importance to ensure

learning. Learners are encouraged to take part in the process of self-assessment (assessment AS learning).
Summative forms of assessment (assessment OF learning) are also part of the curriculum assessment under the
K to 12.

The K to 12 curriculum prescribes that the assessment process should utilize the wide variety of
traditional and authentic assessment tools and techniques for a valid, reliable and realistic assessment of
learning. Traditional and authentic assessments complement each other though they are not mutually exclusive.
Furthermore, it gives greater importance on assessing understanding and skills development rather than on
mere accumulation of content.

In K to 12 curriculum, assessment will be standards-based to ensure that there is

standardization in teaching and learning. Department of Education (DepEd) issued an order (DepEd Order No.
31, s. 2012) stating that assessment will be done in four levels and will be weighted accordingly.

These levels are the following:

 Knowledge refers to the essential content of the curriculum, the facts and
information that the student acquires.

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 Process refers to cognitive acts that the student does on facts and information to
to come up with meanings and understandings.

 Understanding refers to lasting big ideas, principles, and generalizations that

fundamental to the discipline which may be assessed using the facets of understanding

 Products/Performances refers to real-life application of understanding as shown

students’ performance of authentic tasks.

The assigned weight per level of assessment are shown in the following table:

At the end of the quarter, the student's performance will be described based on the prescribed level of
proficiency which has equivalent numerical values. Proficiency level is computed from the sum of all the
performances of students in various levels of assessment. Each level is described as follows:
Beginning. The student at this level struggles with his/her understanding of prerequisite
and fundamental knowledge skills that have not been acquired or developed adequately.

Developing. The student at this level possesses the minimum knowledge and skills and
core u.nderstanding but needs help throughout the performance of authentic tasks.

Approaching Proficiency. The student at this level has developed the fundamental
knowledge and skills and core understandings, and with little guidance from the teacher and/or with some
assistance from peers, can transfer these understandings through authentic performance tasks.

Proficient The student at this level has developed the fundamental knowledge and
skills and core understandings, and can transfer them independently through authentic
performance tasks.

Advanced. The student at this level exceeds the core requirements in terms of
knowledge, skills and core understandings, and can transfer them automatically and flexibility through
authentic performance tasks.

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3. The Effects of Grading on Students

Over the years, studies have also been made on how grades and the comments
of teachers written on students' papers might affect students' achievement. An early investigation by Page
(1958) focused specifically on this issue. In the said study, 74 school teachers administered a test to the
students in their classes and scored in the usual way. A numerical score was assigned to each students' paper
and on the basis of the scores obtained, a corresponding letter grade of A, B, C, D, or F was given. Next,
teachers randomly divided the students' papers into three groups. The first group received only the numerical
score and letter grade. The second group aside from the Score and grade, received standard comments: A:
Excellent!: Keep it up; B: Good work! Keep it up C: Perhaps try to do still better?; D: Let's bring this up; znd
F: Let's raise this grade! For the third group, teachers marked the score, letter grades and then wrote on each
paper a variety of individualized comments. Page asked the teachers to write anything they wished on these
papers but to be sure their personal feelings and instructional practices. Papers were then returned to students in
a normal way.

Page then evaluated the effects of the comments by considering students' scores on
the very next test or assessment given in the class. The results showed that students who received the standard
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comments with their grade achieved significantly higher scores than those who received only a score and
grade. Those students who received individualized comments did even better. This led him to conclude that
grades can have a beneficial effect on student learning when accompanied by specific or individualized
comments from the teacher (Stewart & White, 1976). Studies conducted in more recent years confirmed Pages'
conclusion.

Based on the study presented in the previous paragraphs, its relevance are:

1. It illustrated that while grades may not be compulsory for teaching or learning, it can be used in
positive ways to enhance students' achievement and performance.

2. It showed that positive effects can be gained with relatively little effort on the
part of teachers. Stamps or stickers with standard comments such as these could be easily produced for teachers
to use. Yet the effect of this simple effort has significant positive effect on students' performance.

3. Building a Grading and Reporting System

3.1 The Basis of Good Reporting is Good Evidence
Whatever is preferred and required of the teacher when it comes to format, grading
and reporting should provide high-quality information to interested person of any schema they can understand
and use. The basis of such high-quality information is vertical evidence on student learning. Evaluation experts
stress that if one is going to make important decisions about students that have broad implications, such as
decisions involved in grading, the more that good evidence must be ready at hand (Airasian, 1994; Linn &
Gronlund, 2000; Stiggins, 2001). In the absence of good evidence, even the most detailed and hi-tech grading
and reporting system is useless. It simply cannot serve the basic communication functions for which it is
intended.

3.2 Major Purposes of Grading and Reporting

The following are the major purposes of grading and reporting:
 To communicate the achievement status of students to parents and others
 To provide information that students can use for self-evaluation
 To select, identify or group students for certain educational paths or programs
 To provide incentives for students to learn
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 To evaluate the effectiveness of instructional programs
 To provide evidence of students' lack of effort or inappropriate responsibility

3.3 Grading and Reporting Methods

3.3.1 Letter Grades

 The most common and best known of all grading methods

 Mostly composed of five-level grading scale
 Letter Grade Descriptors
Despite their apparent simplicity, the true meaning of letter grades is not always clear. What the
teachers would like to communicate with particular letter grade and what parents interpret that grade to mean,
often are not the same (Waltman & Frisbie, 1994). To give more clarity to the meaning of letter grade, most
schools include a key or legend on the reporting from in which each letter grade is paired with an explanatory
word or phrase. Descriptors must be carefully chosen, to avoid additional complications and misunderstanding.
Advantage:
 A brief description of students' achievement and level of performance including
students' potentials can be provided to parents and other interested persons.
 Based on parents' experience when they were still studying, it is easier for them to believe and understand
what letter grade means.
Disadvantages:
 Requires abstraction of a great deal of information into a single symbol (Stiggins, 2001)
 Despite educators' best effort, letter grades tend to be interpreted by parents in strictly norm-referenced
terms. The cut-offs between grade categories are always are always arbitrary and difficult to justify.
 Lacks the richness of other more detailed reporting methods such as standards-based grading, mastery
grading, and narrative.

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3.3.2 Percentage Grades

 Are the ultimate multi-category grading method
 Can range from 0 to 100
 Generally more popular among high school teachers than elementary
teachers
Advantages:
 Allows for maximum discriminators in evaluation of students' achievement and
performance
 Maximizes the variation among students, making it easier to choose students for honors or representative
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for special programs
Disadvantages:
 Requires a great deal of abstraction
 Interpretation of meaning of a percentage grade extremely difficulty
 The cut-offs are no less arbitrary but a lot more
 Because of a large number of grade categories, it is less reliable and more subjective.

3.3.3 Standards-Based Grading

In an effort to bring greater clarity and specificity to the grading process, many
schools initiated standards-based grading procedures and reporting forms. Guskey and Bailey (2001) identify
four steps in developing standards-based grading. These steps are:
1. Identify the major learning goals or standards that students will be expected to achieve at each grade
level or in each course of study.
2. Establish performance indicators for the learning goals.
3. Determine graduated level of quality (benchmarks) for assessing each goal
or standard.
4. Develop reporting tools that communicate teachers' judgments of students'
learning progress and culminating achievement in relation to the learning goals and standards.
Advantages:
 When clear learning goals or standards are established, standards-based grading offers meaningful
information about students' achievement and performance to students, parents and to others.
 If information is detailed, it can be useful for diagnostic and prescriptive purposes.
 Facilitates teaching and learning processes better than any other grading method
Disadvantages:
 Takes a lot of effort.
 Often complicated for parents to understand.
 May not communicate the appropriateness of students' progress.
3.3.4 Pass/Fail Grading
Simplest alternative grading method available to educators reduces the number of grade categories to
just two: Pass or Fail. In the late 1800s Pass/Fail grading was originally introduced in college-level courses in
the college in order for students to give more importance to learning and less to grades they attained. By
lessening the emphasis on grades, many educators believed that students would be encouraged to take more
challenging subjects.
Pass/Fail was popular in most universities and colleges in 1970s. These universities and colleges
utilized this pass/fail grading to various programs.
Advantages:
 Simplifies the grading process for teachers and students.
 Use of a single minimal cut-off and only two grade categories improve the reliability of grade assignments.
 Pass/Fail grading has the potential to make learning environments more relaxed by focusing students'
attention on learning rather than on grade (Goldstein & Tilker 1971).Pass/Fail grading is what students will
face in many real-life situations.
Disadvantages:
 Students gain very little prescriptive information.
 Students spend less time studying if pass/fail grading is used than when a wider
range grading system is utilized.
 Students only study to attain minimum passing level and show less effort in striving for excellence.
4. Developing Effective Reporting System
The most critical issue to be addressed in selecting the tools included in reporting
system is what purpose or purposes it is to serve. Why we need to convey this information and what we need to
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accomplish. To determine the purpose or purposes, three aspects of communication must be considered.
Critical Aspects in Determining Communication Purposes:
a. What information or messages do we want to communicate?
b. Who is the primary audience for that message?
c. How would we like that information or message to be used?

5. Tools for Comprehensive Reporting System

Reporting systems most highly regarded by parents typically include a mix
traditional and more modern reporting tools.
Tools that might be included in comprehensive reporting system:
1. Report Cards
2. Notes: Attached to Report Cards
3. Standardized Assessment Report
4. Phone Calls to Parents
5. Weekly/Monthly Progress Reports
6. School Open-Houses
7. Newsletter to Parents
8. Personal Letter to Parents
9. Evaluated Projects or Assignments
10. Portfolios or Exhibits of Students' Work
11. Homework Assignments.
12. Homework Hotlines
13. School Web Pages
14. Parent-Teacher Conferences.
15. Student-Teacher Conferences
16. Student-Led Conference
6. Guidelines for Better Practice
To ensure better practice of grading and reporting systems, the following statements serve as guide on
how to utilize effectively the grading and reporting systems:
1. Begin with a clear statement of purpose.
2. Provide accurate and understandable descriptions of learning.
3. Use grading and reporting to enhance teaching and learning.

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7. Planning and Implementing Parent-Teacher Conference

The parent-teacher conference is the most common way teachers communicate with
parents about student progress. It is typically a face-to-face discussion, though phone conferences and
calls can also be used. Parent-teacher conferences may be initiated by either the teacher or the parent,
based on purpose.
There are two types of parent-teacher conferences, based on two purposes.
a. Group Conferences
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Module 4: Portfolio Assessment & Grading and Reporting22System
These are conducted in the beginning of the year to communicate school and
class policies, class content, evaluation procedures, expectations, and procedures for getting in
touch with teachers.
b. Individual Conferences
These are conducted to discuss the individual student's achievement, progress or
difficulties.

It is important to plan the conference to be prepared. It means having all the information
well-organized in advance and knowing what to achieve from the conference. It will include a
list of areas pertaining to student that need to be discussed with parents. The conference is an
ideal time to discuss and point out specific areas of strength and weaknesses that is not
communicated through the report card. Note that conference is not a lecture type of gathering or
meeting, it is a conversation. Listening is the primary key to understanding. Listening to parents
will help the teacher understand the student better.
McMHlan (2007) shared the following checklist in preparing for parent-teacher
conferences.

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Evaluation

A. Perform the following tasks:

1. Choose a topic of interest and device a portfolio. Follow the steps in planing and developing portfolio
assessment. Prepare a report describing the portfolio system you design and comply the template below.

Topic:__________________________________________________________
Learning Targets: ________________________________________________
Step Action Plan

2. For each of the required level of assessment, namely; knowledge, process, understanding, and
products/performances, write possible appropriate assessment tools (both traditional and authentic assessment.
Level of Assessment Traditional Assessment Tools Authentic Assessment Tools
Knowledge
Process
Understanding
Performances/Products

3. Create a list of questions that you want to clarify with parents that you will ask during the conference.
Provide also the key ideas and topics that you need to discuss during the conference.
Key Ideas/Topics to discuss during the conference
1.
2.
3.

Questions to ask parents during the conference

1.
2.
3.

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