Student-Led Assessment: Promoting Agency and Achievement Through Portfolios and Conferences

The single greatest authority on student learning is the student doing the learning―but the right structures must be in place for students' voices to be clearly heard and truly valued.

Conventional formative and summative assessment are most often conducted through one-size-fits-all quizzes and tests that yield narrow, predetermined categories of data about students' academic progress. But if we want a truly accurate look at what, how, and to what extent students are learning, who better to consult than the obvious experts on the matter: the students themselves.

In this lively and comprehensive guide, veteran teacher and author Starr Sackstein provides the tools needed to help students compile and present evidence of learning through portfolios and student-led conferences―from templates and rubrics to personal testimonials, reflection questions, and activities.

The book features
* Forms―applicable across grade levels and content areas―for unpacking standards, co-constructing success criteria with students, evaluating current classroom practices, and more.
* Real-life perspectives and scenarios from educators in the field who have embraced portfolios and student-led conferences over standardized tests and letter grades.
* Practical, experience-based guidance for building classroom and schoolwide learning cultures that promote both learner agency and academic achievement.

The resources, recommendations, and reflections in Student-Led Assessment allow educators at all levels to develop systems and protocols for ensuring student ownership of―and pride in―their own hard-won achievement.

Starr Sackstein is the COO of Mastery Portfolio, an EdTech start-up, and a veteran educator. She started her teaching career at Far Rockaway High School in the early 2000s, eager to make a difference. Quickly learning to connect with students, she recognized the most important part of teaching: building relationships. She worked as the director of humanities for West Hempstead Public Schools in West Hempstead, New York, and completed her advanced leadership certification at SUNY New Paltz. Before her leadership role, Sackstein was a UFT Teacher Center coordinator and ELA teacher at Long Island City High School in New York. She also spent nine years at World Journalism Preparatory School in Flushing, New York, as a high school English and journalism teacher, where her students ran the multimedia news outlet WJPSnews.com.

In 2011, the Dow Jones News Fund honored Starr as a Special Recognition Adviser, and in 2012, Education Update recognized her as an outstanding educator. In her last school-based position, Sackstein threw out grades, teaching students that learning isn't about numbers but about developing skills and articulating growth.

Sackstein is a National Board–Certified educator as well as certified as a Master Journalism Educator by the Journalism Education Association (JEA), for which she served as New York State Director from 2010 to 2016. She is the author or coauthor of many books, including but not limited to From Teacher to Leader: Finding Your Way as a First-Time Leader Without Losing Your Mind, Teaching Mythology Exposed: Helping Teachers Create Visionary Classroom Perspective, and Peer Feedback in the Classroom: Empowering Students to Be the Experts. You can learn more about all her published works on her Amazon page or her website, MsSackstein.com.

At speaking engagements around the world, Starr speaks about blogging, journalism education, bring your own device policies, and throwing out grades, which she also highlighted in a recent TEDx talk titled "A Recovering Perfectionist's Journey to Give Up Grades." In 2016, she was named one of ASCD's Emerging Leaders, and in 2022, she was included in the inaugural class of ASCD's Champions in Education. In recent years, Sackstein has spoken internationally in Paris, Barcelona, India, Canada, Dubai, and South Korea on a variety of topics from assessment reform to technology-enhanced language instruction.

She began consulting full-time with the Core Collaborative in 2019, working with teams on assessment reform, and bringing student voice to the front of all classroom learning. It is through her affiliation with the Core Collaborative that Sackstein became the publisher with Mimi and Todd Press, helping other authors share their voices around making an impact for students.

Balancing a busy career of writing and educating with being the mom of Logan is a challenging adventure. Seeing the world through his eyes reminds her why education needs to change for every child.