Examining The Big Picture

By Sam Allis/Burlington

How does this sound as an exam question? A fifth-grader in San Diego County decided to figure out how far a ball would travel if it rolled down a ramp at a steady 5 ft. per sec. for a year (assuming that friction on the shallow incline counteracted the acceleration of gravity.) His work page is a maze of multiplication, punctuated by arrows explaining things like "Here I found out how many seconds there are in a year." His final answer -- 29,863 miles and 1,108.8 yds. -- is accompanied by a proud statement: "I chose this paper because it's a problem I created and solved myself."

The child's exercise is an example of what is known as the portfolio approach to testing, which derives its name from the collection of work assembled by artists and architects to show off the true scope of their talent. In addition to taking formal exams, a portfolio student selects his or her best work during an entire year of study, and at term's end explains the choices. The portfolio approach places emphasis on overall accomplishment rather than ability to conquer a battery of tests. And students learn the virtues of improvement as they revise and embellish drafts of their work, as opposed to the cycle of cramming and forgetting that can accompany an exam regimen.

Portfolios have been used on a small scale for some time in pilot projects around the country -- but over the past year, fourth- and eighth-graders in about one-third of Vermont's public elementary and middle schools began assembling portfolios in English and mathematics to be scored by their teachers. This year the remaining schools will participate. While students will continue to take tests to measure basic skills in subjects like mathematics and reading, the goals are to incorporate such gauges gradually into the portfolios and, perhaps, do away with exams altogether.

In English classes, students assemble poems, plays and essays for their portfolios. They also submit to a 45-minute creative-writing session to determine how well they perform under pressure. Mathematics is a tougher challenge for all concerned. Thus far the attempts to build a portfolio include everything from exercises in factors and fractions to mind-stretching essays on the color of mathematics and the composition of letters to Albert Einstein. But, says Ann Rainey, an award-winning eighth-grade math teacher in the Shelburne Middle School near Burlington, "we still don't know what a math portfolio should be." The development of a uniform portfolio-scoring system is equally difficult. Vermont education authorities have set up seven week- long sessions this summer to help teachers calibrate their mathematics scoring.

Most Vermont teachers seem enthusiastic, if curious, about the new method. But some fear that basic skills will suffer if uniform testing of students is abolished. "That would definitely be a mistake in math," says Steven Jarrett, an eighth-grade math teacher in Craftsbury. "Algebra needs to be practiced continuously." Concedes Ross Brewer, director of the Vermont project: "There are no smart people to copy. We are literally making this thing up as we go along."