Breaking news: Obama campaign wants to dump NCLB testing, use portfolios instead
I had the honor of appearing on the Diane Rehm Show this morning, along with D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee, Lisa Graham Keegan of the McCain campaign, Melody Barnes of the Obama campaign, Greg Toppo of USA Today, and Rick Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation. We discussed the candidates’ education proposals, and all went according to plan until about halfway through the segment when Melody said that Obama wanted to look at different kinds of student assessments, including portfolios.
Portfolios? As Greg and I said on the air, this was news. We’re not aware of the Obama camp ever saying before that portfolios might be part of the mix. I’m pretty sure I could hear Kati Haycock screaming from a few miles away. (And I bet that George Miller, the chairman of the House Education Committee, won’t be so happy with this development either.) After all, several states experimented with using portfolios as large-scale assessments back in the 90s, and they were found to be completely unreliable, as their grading relies on subjective judgments to a large degree. If you think “adequate yearly progress” is complicated and leads to insane results, wait till you introduce portfolios. With every grader coming up with a different score, you are going to see mass confusion about whether kids are reaching standards or not. (This 2004 Education Next Jay Mathews article on portfolios is a good primer on the pros and cons of the approach. Note this quote from none other than Keegan: “A collection of student work can be incredibly valuable, but it cannot replace an objective and systematic diagnostic program. Hopefully, we will come to a place where we incorporate both.”
Let me make a prediction: either the Obama campaign will clarify that the Senator would consider portfolios on top of tests, not instead of them, or the McCain campaign will pounce on this issue and argue that it shows Obama to be weak on reform. Because one thing is for sure: embracing portfolios is a clear signal of an intention to roll back accountability.
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:14 pm
If Kati Haycock can’t be heard screaming, then I can all the way from NYC. In my school portfolios were the things we were forced to fraudulently make up (did I say that out loud? I meant to say “compile retroactively”) to justify promoting students who failed their standardized tests.
I’m not a huge fan of tests as the litmus tests. But portfolios are a joke and ripe for abuse.
Noooooooooooooooo.....
October 21st, 2008 at 1:17 pm
In high school, I tried to convince my Chemistry teacher to accept my portfolio’s mold-growing science project in place of my failing chemistry test grades. When he refused, I told him my Dad would be very disappointed since he worked so hard on it.
Portfolios? Obama’s Melody is off-key.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Portfolios were used in exactly two states in the 1990s. In Vermont, the system did have problems with reliability, in large part because the scoring system was too complex. In Kentucky, the system was simpler, and the state used them quite reliably and quite well for years.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:15 pm
My district ($25,000 per pupil funding) is adopting portfolios & performance-based assessment. One more reason why my typical child (I have two children with autism as well) now attends a Jesuit high school.
By the way, I assume most folks here are thinking of portfolio assessment in terms of grade inflation. However, portfolio assessment can be used just as effectively to downgrade high achievers.
A California student I know well, who tests gifted, entered her suburban high school hoping to become valedictorian. Her hopes were dashed in the first semester when her foreign language instructor gave her an A- or B+ in the class. (The valedictorians in her school have A+ averages.)
This student had grades of 100 on all tests and quizzes, but had been given a low grade for “creativity” on the poster they’d all been required to submit. There was no way to protest the grade because the daughter had already thrown the poster away when the mom found out what had happened.
(How could a gifted student toss out an authentic real-world Spanish poster, you ask? Who knows? Kids are crazy!)
Similar stories have been shared with me by parents living in other affluent suburban schools. I’m fairly certain that if someone did a systematic study of portfolio assessment today he’d find portfolio assessment used as a means of grade inflation for low performers and grade deflation for high performers.
I know it’s not an original observation, but I’ll say it anyway: There are two ways to close a gap.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
Portfolios can be useful at the individual class level. When done properly, they can provide a fuller picture of the student’s capabilities than a traditional letter grade does. They can be particularly useful in showing the student’s progress over the course of a school year.
That said, portfolios should not replace standardized tests especially when it comes to assessing school-wide performance. The two types of assessments serve different purposes and therefore should be used in combination.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:46 am
The idea that we should rely ONLY on portfolios for assessment is a strawman that’s easily dismembered. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the use of standardized testing...
April 15th, 2009 at 10:25 am
My friend on Orkut shared this link with me and I’m not dissapointed at all that I came here.