Assessment Portfolios Systems for English Language Learners (ELL)

As I reread my post last week about the Japenese language teachers use of portfolios in teaching English to their students, I realized this is an area I wanted to research again. Upon the beginning of this assignment I hadn't even thought about ELL or ESL as target students for portfolios, but it seems to me they may be the biggest beneficiaries of this system. As anyone who has learned a second language will tell you, it's a very time-consuming process that requires you to actually retrain your thoughts and mind processes into another system. The reflection and revision process (as well as peer reviews, perhaps including native speakers) seem to be ideally situated to the unique position on ELL or ESL students.
On that note, I discovered an article that deals primarily how to implement a portfolio system for ELL in a school district, but it offered other insightful information as well. Unfortunately, it is an older article (12/2000) so hopefully it isn't too out of date. It is on the Center for Applied Linguistics Web site at
http://www.cal.org/resources/Digest/0010assessment.html

Arguably, the primary benefit of implementing a portfolio assessment for ELL students is the inclusion of the students at all. According to the authors of the article, "Many states have policies that restrict English language learners from taking commercially developed, norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests for up to three years after their arrival in a U.S. School system. In contrast, all students can be included in an assessment portfolio system."

Additionally, the school district benefits because portfolios (hopefully) help to establish greater school accountability for all students. "By providing sytems with a richer source of information about school learning, assessment portfolios can help school systems identify and meet the needs of diverse students, including ELLs."

All right, now come the negatives. Besides the standard worries about cost and reliability, the authors of this article include teacher performance as a possible inclusion in this catagory. The authors quote other researchers and write, "When using portfolio assessments, performance conditions may vary, and teacher bias can affect students' performance. For example, the maount of support teachers provide to students, the amount of time students are allowed to spend on portfolio samples, and the extent to which student work is augmented by support from external sources have raised questions about the validity of inferences about student competence based on portfolio work."

I hadn't really thought out the possible teacher bias angle because I assumed a teacher who would advocate using portfolios (which include extra work for themselves) would naturally be very supportive of students efforts and allow ample time for portfolios, but perhaps this isn't always the case.