Evaluating administrators with portfolios: principals report mostly positive experiences when used as part of a performance review

School Administrator, Oct, 2004 by Alexander Russo

Portfolios are used statewide in Alabama for school-level administrator evaluations, according to Buck, either annually or every three years, depending on the individual's tenure status.

Reducing Subjectivity

For school districts that are adopting or planning to adopt portfolio-based evaluation systems for administrators, the portfolios are sometimes part of an effort to make the annual performance review a two-way street.

"Too often, evaluation is something that's done to you," says Patty Fox, evaluation coordinator for the 62,000-student Greenville County, S.C., school system, which will be evaluating principals with portfolios starting this year, with the hope of extending portfolio use to the central office in the near future. "We wanted to give principals a say in their own evaluation."

Those in charge of conducting evaluations also highlight the fairness of the portfolios compared to traditional methods.

"I think it's more objective and less subjective," says Sue Colton, director of leadership development for the Broward County, Fla., Public Schools, where the use of portfolios for evaluation has expanded over the past three years. "With a portfolio you have hard data and you have documentation--not only a descriptor and a process but also the bottom-line results. It leaves that element of the subjective out of it. The data tell the story."

Portfolios also add a real-world element that is hard to replace without spending substantial time in a school or district office. "Portfolios have definitely added value to the evaluation process," says Stephen Nowlin, associate professor at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Ala., a former superintendent who is a state-approved evaluator of superintendents in Alabama, where portfolios are used for all school- and district-based administrators. "One of the principal benefits is that portfolios require actual working papers, which can't really be made up."

Another benefit, according to Nowlin, is that the portfolios require superintendents to explain what their role is in each of the documents they include, as well as whether the outcome was successful. With the help of the outside evaluator, local school board members review the superintendents' portfolios, as well as the results of structured interviews and other feedback.

Even when the supervisor is working in the same building, a portfolio can help ensure a broad, thorough evaluation. "I have my assistant superintendent's portfolio right here in front of me," says Carol Beers, superintendent of the 9,000-student Williamsburg-James City County School District in Virginia, where portfolios used to be required annually and are still used voluntarily by many administrators.

Beers finds it worthwhile to have the portfolio to look at along with the traditional performance checklists of her principals and central-office administrators. Even without the state requirement to compile them every year--a process that the school district deemed too time-consuming for some--many administrators like having them as part of their evaluation process.