Student portfolios in a standardized world

Kappa Delta Pi Record, Winter 2002 by Penta, Mary Q

Despite an emphasis on standardized testing, schools implemented student portfolios and found ways to make them useful tools.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, development of portfolios for student learning and assessment was a hot topic encouraged in the educational literature. Based on this, it seemed appropriate that the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) in Raleigh, North Carolina, include portfolios in two major grants from the U.S. Department of Education Magnet Schools Assistance Program between 1995 and 2001.

The school system (WCPSS 1995; 1998) stated that a key purpose of each three-year grant was to develop and implement innovative educational practices. Staff members felt that student portfolios would be effective in capturing the richness and depth of the innovative instructional programs they were implementing. These innovations included an elementary-school integrated arts program; a KA Montessori Program; multiple intelligences approaches at two middle schools and an International Baccalaureate program at a third middle school; and a math, science, and technology high school.

When adopted at the magnet schools, portfolio development brought both problems and benefits. In the late 1990s, research literature moved away from portfolios and other alternative assessments and back toward standardized testing. Several state legislatures, including North Carolina's, incorporated their annual multiple-choice testing programs into formal accountability systems that rated school performance and provided sanctions or rewards to schools based on their test results. Developing student portfolios is not easy under any circumstances, but attempting to implement them in an environment that emphasizes standards and pays teacher bonuses based on schools' multiple-choice test results is even more difficult.

Electronic Portfolios

Teachers, administrators, and technology specialists working on the first grant chose student portfolios as one means of assessment for instructional innovations at their schools-specifically, electronic portfolios. Their efforts met with varying levels of success. The electronic format seemed to lead to numerous benefits as well as serious problems. Staff members at each school tailored the format of the portfolios to fit the instructional innovation used at each school, such as integrated arts or multiple intelligences. They also used curriculum mapping and other techniques to ensure that areas included in the portfolios represented the goals and objectives of North Carolina's state curriculum. Even though the portfolio formats differed at each school, grant staff members sought a common software program that could support each school's format.

Grant schools each had a staff member half-time for more) with technology training and certification. The technology experts helped other staff members review and choose software capable of supporting the portfolio formats and most suited to the needs of the group. They also reviewed computer hardware and related software programs available at each school to determine the amount of existing support for the portfolio software. The grant budget provided some funding for equipment to supplement what was available at the schools. The district technology plan specified that local area networks (LANs)-necessary to access the portfolios and store data-- dense audio and video files for large numbers of students-would be in place at most grant schools by November 1995.

When November came and went without installation of the LANs, it was clear that this would significantly affect portfolio access and storage. Glitches in the portfolio software package, once it arrived, and the late arrival of computer hardware also caused difficulties that affected the entire timeline, but the staff members adapted effectively. Instead of the complete portfolios planned for the first year, some schools developed specific segments to be integrated into the whole at a later date. Other schools kept the planned assessments intact but implemented them with much smaller groups of students.

Staff Development for Technology and Assessment

It was necessary to provide professional development for grant staff and faculty members at their schools to develop the student portfolio program. Typical of the training required was a three-day workshop in alternative assessment, which included a train-thetrainer component so that staff members could begin to work with teachers at their schools. Because the portfolios would be in electronic format, it was also necessary to provide specialized technology training. Training in the possible formats for portfolio assessments was more successful than technology training, however. Teachers, many of whom already used some form of traditional portfolios for students, had a frame of reference for this aspect of the training. But most of them approached technology training with the misgivings and anxieties typical of adults facing some new requirement of the computer age. Glitches and difficulty understanding some of the portfolio software did nothing to allay their anxiety. Finding time in teachers' already overcrowded schedules for both types of training was also a challenge.