Portfolios: Will They Endure? - alternative forms of grading

When being in high school during the school years of 1942-1946, an illiterate person was an individual who could not read or write, period. Now, if pupils after high school "read only on the seventh grade level" is looked at with disdain. Actually, individual reading at the seventh grade level do read complicated reading materials. One has only to look at seventh grade content to realize that it has its complexities. The same is true of seventh grade mathematics texts; many individuals would find they truly needed to brush up on mathematics to achieve on the seventh grade level. One news commentator was disgusted with pupils reading only on the tenth grade level upon high school graduation! There is much misunderstanding of standardized test results when a school district wants "everyone to read above the average or mean" of pupils having taken the test. Recently, a university was upset that of their students only half were reading above the mean, based on norms for university students. A proper understanding of statistics would not hurt many people in society. Statistical results in research studies leave a lot of room for disagreement and arguments (See monthly columns by Gerald W. Bracey of the Phi Delta Kappan, (the May 1999 issue being no exception). Arguments and disagreements zero in on the following:

1. how the results are to be interpreted

2. which procedures were used in conducting the study, such as random sampling versus quasi experimental designs, among others.

3. the number of students in the study

4. the duration of the study

5. tests used to measure achievement of pupils in the study.

6. extraneous factors in the study that might produce other results that the ones actually measured

7. biases in the study due to not controlling selected variables

8. lack of validity of the study

9. too much emphasis placed upon reliability to the minimizing of validity in the study

10. internal and external validity lacking (See Ediger, 1997, p. 237).

Those advocating cooperation to improve education in the school setting believe that test scores do not tell enough about what pupils have learned. Daily classroom work of learners is completely ignored when test scores and results have been published. Constructivism stresses that each day pupils in context indicate what has been accomplished. Test results, standardized or state mandated, indicate pupil achievement outside of the contextual daily experiences of pupils. Test results have little to do with performance on the job or in a profession. This does not rule out the use of tests that are welt developed and are based an quality research, such as in predictive validity whereby leading tests are used to predict how well a student will do in college, graduate school, and/or in the professions. However, leaning on test results only does put an excessive amount of faith on testing to determine a pupil's entire future (See Walsh and Betz, 17 and 18). Certainly, there are other indicators of pupil achievement such as daily classroom work and attitudes in society.