Student Portfolios

With all of the talk around student performance and measurable improvement, I am surprised that student portfolios are not more widely used. These same portfolios might be useful in assessing teachers' performance, another area of tremendous debate which will surely rage on for many years to come.

What I like about student portfolios is how they measure individual students' success over time. They can not only be used to show progress over a single year, but from the end of one year to the beginning of the next, we would be able to see where a student might have 'lost' some of their ability/knowledge, and also where they might have added to their knowledge, or experience. Teachers can use portfolios to help build students' confidence, showing students where they have advanced.

I certainly don't claim that portfolios are, or even could be, the final solution to all assessment needs and requirements. Testing students' knowledge at various times is useful for having a snapshot of their knowledge/growth at a given time, but that's all it is, a snapshot. Summative assessments can also become a part of a portfolio. Maintaining portfolios becomes an issue. Who decides what goes into a portfolio? Should students have a say? (I think so.) Should everything be stored electronically? (I would certainly simplify storage and transferability issues. The question of access and security looms large though. Some major benefits of maintaining a digital portfolio means we could store audio and video clips of students' reading, performances, interactions, presentations, etc.

An idea I saw recently was to have students send themselves an email at the beginning of the year stating what they thought the year would be like, what they hoped to learn, and set goals. At the end of the year students would read this email and compare their thoughts from the beginning of the year with what actually happened. This idea would dovetail nicely with electronic portfolios. Students could even set some mid-term goals, check on those during the middle of the year, and work with the teacher on how what changes they might make to meet their goals.

What do you think about portfolios for students? How do you see portfolios being used in teacher evaluations, if at all?