ABSTRACT
Standardised assessment tools for learning are most often specific to a domain, such as reading or maths, and are specific to a population of learners. The teacher didn’t use a lot of formal assessments, arguing that it took time away from actual teaching. In practice, the portfolio assessment tool enables teachers to use an individual’s pattern of performance against the norms and to select those who need the intensive one-to-one programme with a highly trained Reading Recovery teacher. The risk for both teachers and learners can be described as narrowing the attention to what needs to be taught and what needs to be learned. A publically available example from the bank of reading assessments features a passage from the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by the Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marque. Less formal assessments may have some of these features but they certainly should meet the requirements of validity and reliability, at least in principle.
