Portfolios across the Curriculum: Whole School Assessment in Kentucky

Abstract

ever attempted by any state in the nation. As part of the reform, a yearly state-wide performance-based assessment of each school was instituted in 1991. Along with other components, the assessment included a writing portfolio, holistically graded by teachers in each school, that would count 14 percent in the total assessment (amended to 11 percent in 1998). What, the English teachers asked, would this writing portfolio be? Collecting a portfolio of student writing and grading student writing holistically were not new ideas, and many of us English teachers had been using similar strategies for years. However, the standard portfolio and statewide grading rubrics were a bit much to comprehend all at one time, along with the rest of the complex reform. Moreover, we English teachers heard that the portfolio was designed to improve the quality of student writing in general by moving pedagogy across the curriculum toward more student-centered focus and real-world writing. We heard that the portfolio was an assessment of the writing instruction of every Kentucky school, not only English classrooms. But the reform was so massive and the