The Washington Post brags it’s reporting helped Virginia officials decide to sharply limit the alternative testing program to the No Child Left Behind. This alternative test is called the Virginia Grade Level Alternative (or VGLA). It is a portfolio assessment.
A portfolio assessment is exactly as it sounds–a collection of work-product done by the student showing mastery of each test question.
The Post claims growing numbers of students are being assessed this alternative way and test scores are noticeably higher as a result.
“The moves stem from concerns raised by parents and news reports, including in The Washington Post, about the rapidly increasing use of the alternative test and the corresponding rise in test scores.”
Really?
You mean a portfolio of proof (much of which would stand up in a court of law, stronger than contemporaneous notes) built over the course of a year, piece by piece, evidence of mastery of each and every Standard of Learning, is LESS valid than a one-day snapshot bubble sheet exam?
Of course, there’s no big company with lobbyists and salesmen standing behind the portfolio tests. Bubble-sheet standardized tests, on the other hand, are big business.
“When you look at the growing numbers across the state, it appears there really is a problem here,” said Del. John M. O’Bannon III (R-Henrico). He’s talking of the growing numbers of students being assessed using the VGLA.
Special Education students account for nearly a quarter of all students in most Virginia school systems, if one counts every student with an Individual Education Plan (IEP) or 504.
Students who are designated as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) are also given a portfolio assessment, and their population is growing by leaps and bounds due to an influx of families from abroad. According to the Virginia Department of Education the population of students who qualify for ESOL, who can’t speak English, grows at a rate equaling the population of 10 new elementary schools in Virginia per year. (And they don’t arrive organized for school on the first day of September leave on the last day in June. On the contrary, they arrive throughout the year. Some depart for months and arrive back to class without explanation.)
So sure, there’s a growing number of VGLA tests being given, because the populations eligible for VGLA are ballooning.
Also, since the VGLA was an option, more students with special needs are being given the portfolio test as well.
Perhaps one reason the use of VGLA has increased is teachers are recognizing it as a better assessment of what their students actually know.
What Wasn’t Reported By The Washington Post: There are students who arrive at Virginia schools from outside the country on a regular basis. They are tested using the standard format. In one example, a student arrived from a central American country the week the tests were being given. He didn’t know English, but hadn’t been tested to receive English as a Second Language services. We did not know if he could read or write, even in Spanish. We did not know if he had attended any organize school in his home country. We didn’t know if he had any type of special needs. He hadn’t taken any lessons from this Virginia grade school, because he literally arrived on the Monday of the week the bubble sheet SOL tests were given. He’d never seen a bubble sheet, couldn’t speak English, BUT, under the law, he had to undergo the SOL test and his dismal scores counted against the entire school and school system. It’s the law, and this type of thing happens quite a bit.
There is current research to tabulate standardized test scores in one Title One school only looking at students who remain at the school for the entire six years. That research is due at the end of this school year. Those scores will be telling.
According to the Washington Post article:
“The number of portfolios given in Virginia more than doubled, to 47,000, in the past three years. Recently released state data show that one in five students with disabilities in third through eighth grade was assessed with a portfolio in reading and in math in the 2008-09 school year. Several Northern Virginia school systems exceeded state averages, including Alexandria and Fairfax and Prince William counties. In Manassas Park, 45 percent of students with disabilities were tested with portfolios in reading and about 47 percent in math. The rates were higher in nearly a dozen other school systems.”
So a minority (one in five) of Special Education students are being assessed in this way.
Although teachers and Superintendants are FOR portfolio testing when needed, the chief protagonist against portfolio testing is the state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Patricia I. Wright.
“Portfolios can be valuable assessment tools within classrooms, but they are problematic for a large-scale accountability program, in which cost-effectiveness, consistency and validity are paramount, Wright said. Teachers spend many hours compiling portfolios, and local school systems are responsible for scoring the tests.”
The amount of money spent on standardized tests at the county level is in the millions of tax dollars. Money not reimbursed by the federal government. Portfolio tests are gathered throughout the year from the work the student is doing in class. Building a file of school work, contemporaneously, is not an imposition on many teachers and is not as much of a financial burden on the school districts as the standardized test. Please note Super Intendants are FOR the portfolio tests.
According to the Post, “Wright said she is worried that evidence submitted by teachers is not consistently credible. A state investigation in Buchanan County last summer found that some teachers submitted work samples for portfolios that were not done by students.
A rather small sample of mis-deeds on which to base policy. I’m sure the corporations behind the standardized tests wouldn’t accept such a small sampling as a reliable and valid indicator their standardized tests were inaccurate. OK, so yes, there are some problems in administering a portfolio assessment, but much less than putting everyone through the meat-grinder of a multiple choice test created by a large corporation.
A single multiple choice test, for somebody who can’t read or write even in their native tongue, doesn’t help anyone understand anything…
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You’ve got to be kidding. These portfolios are meaningless! They are conducted with few rules. For example, a teacher can give the same worksheet over and over again until they get one with enough correct answers. There is no need to retain or apply info – do it once and you’re done! The end result – those talking the portfolio assessment – students with special needs or lacking command of English – actually outperform their typical peers. Often 100% of those in a school pass, and many score “advanced” – sometimes in the very area in which they have a disability! These scores are often inconsistent with other standard measures, the student’s grades and even the present level of performance in the student’s own IEP! You have students with goals of simple mathematical functions getting pass advance in Math 8 via portfolio or students with intellectual disabilities passing 8th grade reading via portfolio. This wasn’t the Post that brought this to light – it was parents that were afraid their children’s education suffers because their children’s assessments were being fudged – like the parent whose child with dysgraphia scored pass advanced in writing! For each portfolio, an estimated 25-hours of teacher time is spent building it. That’s 25 hours of instruction that child is losing.
I don’t think multiple choice testing is the answer, and NCLB’s 100% pass mandate is the problem. The answer is to test children with special needs on yearly progress, rather than giving them benchmark tests that they can’t possibly pass, then find a way to game the system.
AR,
I’d love to hear from where you got your information. 25 hours? I don’t know of any special education teacher taking 25 hours to put together a portfolio. I certainly didn’t. If you know the SOLS you’re trying to teach, and building a portfolio over time (not waiting and trying the put it together in a day or two) then it is not very invasive at all.
I’ve not heard of any situation such as having Special Education students pass “advanced.”
I’m also interested in why as a parent, you care how your child does on an NCLB test. It has NO barring on instruction what-so-ever. It is 100% for school certification and funding.
Extremely disconcerting that “cost effectiveness” is considered more important than improving education. Especially when it comes from the State Superintendent of Public Instruction!