Bibliography of Assessment Alternatives: Portfolios

Gearhart, Maryl, Joan Herman, Eva Baker, and Andrea Whittaker. Writing Portfolios at
the Elementary Level: A Study of Methods for Writing Assessment, 1992. Available
from: National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing,
UCLA Graduate School of Education, 145 Moore Hall, 405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles,
CA 90024, (310) 206-1532.
The authors reported on a study that addressed the following questions: (1) Can portfolios be
scored reliability? (2) Are such judgments valid? (3) Are students scored comparably on
their portfolios and other writing assessments? (4) How did raters feel about scoring
portfolios?
Results showed that: (1) holistic ratings of portfolios and class work can be very reliable; (2)
raters tended to rate the portfolio as a whole higher than the average of the scores on
individual pieces of work in the portfolio (raising the possibility that additional factors are at
work); (3) portfolio scoring has promise provided that teachers and students know the criteria
so that they can select content. This report also provides the scoring guide (but no sample
student work) that was used to score individual pieces of work and the portfolio as a whole.
(AL# 470.3WRIPOE)
Gentile, Claudia A., James Martin-Rehrmann, and John H. Kennedy. Windows into the
Classroom, January 1995. Available from: Education Information Branch, Office of
Educational Research and Improvement, US Department of Education, 555 New Jersey
Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20208, (800) 424-1616, (202) 219-1651.
This report describes the classroom writing of American schoolchildren based on a survey
conducted in 1992 by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). It examines
the types of writing students perform in school, the quality of their classroom writing, the
relationship between their classroom writing and their performance on the NAEP writing
assessment, and instructional factors related to portfolio performance.
To conduct this study, NAEP asked a nationally representative subgroup of the fourth and
eighth graders who participated in the 1992 NAEP writing assessment to submit three pieces
of writing from their Language Arts or English classes that represented their best writing
efforts. Student papers were scored using holistic, primary trait rubrics. Results showed that:
• At both fourth and eighth grades, the majority of the students submitted narrative and/or
informative writing.
• In general, students who spent more time on writing, in school and out of school,
performed better on their portfolio writing. Also, students who were asked to write papers
of medium and long lengths, at least once or twice a month, performed better than those
who rarely or never did so.
The report includes rubrics, statistics, and samples of student work.
Assessment Resource Library, (503) 275-9582 31 Portfolio Bibliography
(formerly Test Center) NWREL, December 1996