Kentucky’s Portfolio Shortcomings Well Known – Outside Kentucky

A recent opinion piece in the New York Times by Lance T. Izumi, a senior fellow in California studies and the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, shows that vague grading of writing portfolios in Kentucky is no secret elsewhere.

Per Izumi, the scoring is inflated and grading from student to student is inconsistent. A similar problem existed with Vermont’s writing portfolio program (at least until that state dropped this element of its accountability system).

So, what do people in California and Vermont know about writing portfolios that our CATS Task Force crowd just can’t agree about?