According to the Washington Post, Portfolios inflate scores. Color me surprised.
When one type of assessment fails too many students, the response is "Let's change the teaching." When too many still fail, it's "Let's blame the teachers for not changing." When the scene doesn't improve, we then try to game the system and teach to the test "Let's teach test-taking skills using the released questions." If we are STILL not making the grade, we change the test and measure the students differently: "Testing without testing."
Portfolios.
We claim it's "more authentic" and a "21st century skill" and all that, but it's just misdirection. They're "fairer" and "more meaningful" only because they artificially raise the scores.
Portfolios are not necessarily the students' work (parents and teachers help, books are consulted), aren't as structured or as difficult, are usually the four or fifth rewrite (with so many specific corrections that the student's voice is lost), and most importantly aren't definite -- anything that looks good goes in, anything that doesn't, won't. How can one fail under those conditions?
"Teachers document learning throughout the year in a binder of class work, including worksheets, quizzes and writing samples." When you have such an obvious selection bias, don't be surprised if the final numbers are off. In this case, higher than they probably should be if you are actually expecting that the students know the same things as students in other jurisdictions.
Let's focus on this paragraph:
Last year, students tested with portfolios outperformed classmates who took multiple-choice tests in Fairfax. Students with disabilities surpassed schoolwide pass rates in reading or math tests in more than a dozen schools. Students learning English were far more likely to score in the highest performance tier on the reading test, which measures knowledge of language arts concepts such as metaphor and plot, than their native-speaking peers. Overall, English-learners and students with disabilities charted 20- and 18-point gains respectively in reading pass rates, compared to a six-point gain for the division.
Hummmmm.
Reposted here because it'll disappear from there.
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