Rationale for Portfolio Assessment

Do portfolios lead to better student writing?*

I'll back up a bit and talk about the issues which came up when Peter Elbow and I began our portfolio system at Stony Brook almost 17 years ago now.

Our purpose was to create a fairer assessment system. We knew all the research that says assessment works best when it involves multiple readers, multiple student papers, and multiple assessment sessions. We were (and still are) convinced that making judgments about a given student's writing ability is simply more reliable when we can read a range of genres from each student plus some reflective writing on the student's own judgments of his/her writing.

So that's what our system was basically designed to do. But we also had in the back of our minds that students need to recognize that writing consists of more than one genre (the typical academic essay) and that it is rare (almost nonexistent) for a writer to address when s/he writes to only one person. So, at some level, we expected the expanded audience and genres to encourage students to become better writers.

Our first discovery was that group discussions of portfolios among teachers was a decidedly invigorating form of teacher improvement. Our teachers at the time were simply greatly stimulated by talking to other teachers about specific papers in theirs and others' classes. They were convinced that they became better teachers as a result of all these interchanges. Surely better teachers encourage greater learning and better performance among students?

And, our second discovery was that students felt encouraged and even a bit awestruck about their discovery of a larger audience and their recognition that writing really cannot be judged on the basis on one piece. They began to see themselves and people who could produce a variety of writings, some better than others. I think this is a healthy and enabling realization.

And, our third discovery was that standards slowly inched upwards because every teacher had at least one outside reader of each of her students' portfolio papers. Not all readers (teachers as well) stress the same qualities in an assignment, nor do all reward the same strengths and punish the same weaknesses. We all had a much greater variety of responses to report to our students and they were able to understand these as having more validity than just one teacher's response (even though, frankly, some students did not like this).

I think it's difficult to say that any particular system is "the" answer for improvement of student writing. A portfolio system has many, many advantages for teachers, students, and institutions. But improvement in student writing takes time. I'd like to say that portfolio systems make students better writers, but all I can really say is that portfolio systems work toward making students more aware writers and more effective self-evaluative writers.

*Pat Belanoff. "Writing Portfolios & Student Improvement."  WPA listserv response. Nov 18, 2000.