Recommendations
Stiggins (1999) recommends a few alternatives to make alternative assessment works. He encourages reliance on learning teams or study groups for the development of assessment literacy. Small groups of teachers and administrators can band together to assume joint responsibility for building their own capacity to use assessment well. They don't need highly paid consultant/trainers to "show them the way." They need access to high-quality learning materials, and they need the time to learn from them. School districts across the country are already using learning teams to provide teachers with a chance to experiment with new assessment strategies in their classrooms and to share their successes and failures with their teammates. Each team member can track her or his own development as a confident, competent classroom assessor by building a portfolio (with self-reflections) for presentation to the team in the form of periodic "student-led conferences," in which the "students" are the teacher/learners. They can then make their best case that they have become competent, confident classroom assessors. Hargreaves (2002) also sees this as important especially establishing communication and building understanding among all those involved in the assessment exercise.
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