Faced with the limitations of traditional testing, teachers across the country are searching for new ways to make students' achievement in the classroom count for morea system of measurement that recognizes difference and reflects the full range of linguistic and cultural experiences. Assessing Literacy with the Learning Record is that tool, presenting a framework that translates teachers' observations into a disciplined, systematic, standards-based reporting process.

Mary Barr and Margaret Syverson have taken the best of the British Primary Language Record and adapted it for use in American middle and high schools. The Learning Record assessment system recognizes contributions from all stakeholders in the process. Teacher narratives, samples of student work, and interviews with parents combine to provide comprehensive evidence of students' progress toward agreed-upon goals and standards. Teachers summarize and record this information, using it both to inform their own teaching and to provide a more uniform and quantifiable record of literacy achievement.

Assessing Literacy with the Learning Record includes all of the materials needed to begin using the Learning Record. It offers clear explanations of each part of the Learning Record; guidelines for observing and recording student activity; and examples from actual learning records kept by classroom teachers. There is also a complete set of reproducible forms for compiling and organizing evidence of progress in talking, listening, reading, and writing, as well as reading and writing developmental scales to guide teaching and learning during the year and provide a summary evaluation at year's end.
About the Author:

Mary A. Barr has directed the Center for Language Learning since its inception in 1994. The Center maintains a network of teacher leaders, experienced in the use of the Learning Record in their own classrooms, who inform its development and serve as coaches to faculties using the Learning Record.

Margaret A. Syverson is an associate professor of rhetoric and composition and codirector of the computer lab at the University of Texas at Austin. This experience has enabled her to perfect and expand the use of the Learning Record to the university level.