Traditional assessment in reading and writing does not accurately reflect what we currently know about the reading and writing process. It disempowers teachers, students, and parents; separates assessment, instruction, and learning; and employs externally defined criteria for cross assessment purposes. Efforts to develop useful alternative procedures for the reading and writing classroom have proliferated during the past several years. However, few movements have caught the attention of educators as quickly as the move towards the use of portfolios as alternative assessment procedures for reading and writing. Implications of portfolios as assessment techniques include: serving as a source of information for teachers to make decisions regarding student progress and program evaluation, serving as a source of information for parent, teacher, and student collaboration, serving as a means of reflection for student self-evaluation, and serving as a means of linking instruction to learning. (Contains 15 references.) (Author)