Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Portfolio Creation

I see your point.

Some of those problems can be cured with better test design (e.g. long-answer tests that don't require transferring an answer to a line). And teachers should be crystal clear about the definition of "show your work." For example, I can solve a multiplication problem by writing out partial answers in chunks instead of the stepwise individual multiplication steps. I don't necessarily write every digit; that would slow me down too much. If I showed this on a test, it would be "my" work. But a teacher might argue that I've "skipped steps." So the teacher needs to be precise about what's expected in terms of "show your work." Mrs. Jones, do you want to see MY work or the work YOU would do?

But as for calculation errors...well, they're errors. If you make a mistake on a test, you should lose points. That's life.

I think there's a larger problem with giving homework (and additionally, class participation) too much influence over grades: these two things make a system more prone to being gamed. Say Little Johnny doesn't usually understand how to do the hard math homework problems. His mom or dad or the internet can help him get the answers, but he might not really understand in spite. Yet he'll get full credit for the assignment. Come test time, it's unlikely that all of the problems he doesn't get will show up on the exam, and their effects on his exam grade will be reduced because of homework and participation. When you throw in high homework scores and high marks for raising his hand all the time, and his overall grade has been gamed up higher than it should be (IMO): he can get a higher grade while knowing less.

If homework and participation weren't scored outside of a small number of points for done/not done, this wouldn't be possible. In this situation, the kids would have more incentive to try to understand problems, more incentive to say, "I really couldn't figure this out," and less incentive to GET 100%!!

I realize the conversation has evolved to a different focus, but forgive me as I would like to add a little more detail to the post about creating a student portfolio. Parents- early on in your child�s elementary years start keeping a container of some type filled with your child�s certificates, specifics about lessons, clubs, teams, or groups, community service, assessments from school, exceptional work, and any other artifacts that you feel capture your child�s moments in time where scholarship, leadership, service, character, or creativity were memorable. There may be times in your child�s life when s/he would like to participate in a camp or another opportunity where advocacy of your child may benefit from this authentic or specific evidence. I have seen parents provide artifacts when advocating for acceptance into gifted and talented programs. Thinking ahead through this type of organization can really help save time later.

As time goes on, usually beginning at about the middle level, these documents can become even more important as passions grow, and therefore stakes become higher in terms of your child�s participation in or recognition of academic or creative experiences. As the child grows, so, too, should his/her ownership of the record-keeping, though you as parents will recognize events that should be documented or artifacts that are worthy of keeping around for at least a few years while your child�s portfolio fodder grows before your child may.

In high school, release even more responsibility to your child. As opportunities arise, you will see the connections between the evidence you have been keeping and its relationship to questions asked on student applications for camps, honor societies, internships, jobs, and any other opportunities or recognitions for which a mind can profit from physical evidence to help stir some memories. In essence, this shoe box has become a very large and casual �portfolio� and �3-D resume�. In fact, as your child develops a resume in the later high school years, some of these experiences may provide helpful recollections.

The final product of a portfolio that a young adult may carry to an interview will be very different from that initial �shoe box� concept of the early years. First, it will be very refined and will only include the most impressive artifacts your child has. ACT scores, transcripts, letters of recommendation from teachers, copies of essays written for scholarships, certificates of achievement and so on will provide evidence that augments your child�s claims in an interview. I am in agreement that elementary artifacts are not appropriate here, and really you will need to judge the value of middle level artifacts in a high school portfolio. If excellence, for instance, in music is evidenced through experiences at the middle level that might be something your child would include in the high school portfolio if s/he is focusing on a music scholarship. It just depends.

In the case of my son, and many students I�ve taught and mentored over the years, the movement towards autonomy is both guided and encouraged, and yes- expected. Students should own their portfolio, and in our case it meant the parent and child sat together to organize that final product. Parents will help double check to ensure their children did not forget something substantial, and can be helpful in taking on a role of an observer who has seen the portfolio for the first time. What do you notice that is impressive? What spurs questions or clarification? Teacher mentors who are advocates for their students should be responsible enough to ensure students whose parents are not �organization savvy� receive guidance towards developing thoughtful record keeping.

I hope these comments are helpful. The concept of actively helping students develop portfolios is not new, but the catalyst for me besides advocacy of our own children at early ages developed when I served as an advisor for an honor society at one point in my career. Students would have profited from providing more than sketchy details regarding previous experiences in leadership or service. Thinking ahead and being organized enough to try to keep meaningful documents in one spot can save a little time and exacerbation later.

Thanks for letting me jump in here!

I think grades should depend nonlinearly on homework. If a student makes an effort on homework but cannot show any grasp of the subject on tests, the student gets a C (D?) for effort. If a student scores 100% on tests and does not do homework, he or she still gets an A. I think this policy makes sense in math, where the purpose of homework is to practice solving problems, but not in history or English, where essays and term papers are intrinsically important.

I agree with you, Bostonian. I also agree with Val and cricket, though. This is sort of the way that I structured things when I taught, Bostonian. I had the oddest way of determining the point total of anyone I've ever known-- I took the top score achieved on each assignment and made that "100%" on that assignment. Beyond that, I had no curve. This meant that there was good incentive for student's to collaborate with one another, and that I could (hypothetically) give the entire class A's. Never happened, of course, and I did have to give out F's, but not many.

I'd add to Val's statement about exam structure by saying that there is also a means of structuring homework so that it is a more meaningful assessment rather than just mechanistic practice.
My homework sets were created de novo in all of my classes, so there was no way to "game" those any more than the (every-Friday, open-notes) quizzes or the exams. They were supposed to be difficult so as to make the students think and apply what they were learning through short quizzes and in-class examples that I'd leave open-ended (I posted solutions immediately after class. So a bit of the same idea that Val was using for homework-- those quizzes and examples counted for very little grade-wise.

Homework sets had no other restrictions than that they HAD to be in the student's own handwriting. Students could work together on them, but they quickly learned that they had better be doing at least some of the work themselves, or at the very least, had better be UNDERSTANDING that work.

I awarded "partial credit" for partially correct answers on homework, tests, and quizzes, but the catch was that the student had to have shown work that I could decipher. Their choice, in other words.

This system is a LOT of work for a teacher, but it results in rock solid grade distributions, ultimately. ONLY the students with excellent mastery earn A's, and only those without it wind up not passing the class.

It also helped students who had test anxiety or other issues with performance, and it encouraged the formation of "learning communities" outside of class time.

To be clear, these were college students, however.

Let me also add, wrt portfolios, that yes, indeed this DOES favor those families with high SES.

Even if students have equal ABILITY/POTENTIAL, it's pretty clear which come from a families where outside activities cannot involve additional monies or parental TIME.

Also clear which of them come from a families where both money and time are not much of an object.

SES matters. It just does. It particularly matters in the fine and performing arts and in STEM, where resources in lower-income schools may compound the problem because they are frequently not seen as "core" missions, and are ill-funded and poorly maintained.

Parents who work in non-salaried, low-wage jobs can't necessarily get kids to even 'free' opportunities. Seriously, I hear "there are free opportunities" and I think, "Wow... 'let them eat cake,' much?" My parents couldn't take the time to get me to a lot of extracurricular things, even when they were affordable. Mostly, if it didn't happen through school-- it didn't happen. I don't even know how my DD would have the opportunities that she does without a parent who doesn't work full-time. That would not be possible if my DH and I both made $12 an hour and worked a job and a half each.

So yes, IMO, portfolios are an even more disparate thing than standardized testing is, just as Bostonian noted.

Bostonian, that article that you linked just goes to show you can put the kids in a great school and they still have to want to learn.

THIS.

And I'll add that even in public, "all children are theoretically equal" school programs, some are still more equal than others. A shining example would be the sixth grade math teacher (fulltime gifted magnet) who asked parents to furnish graphing calculators. She couldn't require them, of course, because then the school would have to furnish them. But it was strongly suggested.

No doubt there will always be opportunities available for some students that aren�t available for other students due to various factors ranging from low SES, to different state codes and provisions, to geographical location. (and on and on) Do you suggest that we take away opportunities available for some in order to make it �fair and equal� to those who don�t have those opportunities? I guess my question here is, how do you propose that the difference in opportunity problem be resolved?

Opportunity can never fully be equalized if parents have a role in educating and rearing their children, but the costs of being competitive in the admissions pool for universities and professional schools should not be raised needlessly. Here is an example. This weekend I spoke with a niece attending Columbia in NYC who will be applying to medical school next year. She has worked as an unpaid intern in a medical research lab for three summers to bolster her applications and can afford to do so because her parents are rich. When I asked her if the position was paid, she said that there was so much demand from pre-meds that labs did not need to pay them. Middle
and lower class college students need to work over the summer to pay for school and cannot take such internships. Medical schools should consider how much research experience to expect of applicants. (More broadly, they should consider whether a 4-year B.A. is necessary, when pre-med courses can be completed in two years.)

That's it exactly.

I don't want a surgeon working on me or a loved one who was able to LOOK attractive to med school admissions staffers by virtue of high SES and as a result, a more lengthy and prestigious CV.

I want one that really IS better than the rest of his/her peers.

Some of this also comes down to parents who don't know how to pad a child's resume. That is as large a factor in low SES as lack of financial means and opportunity. Parents who have never even attended college themselves aren't much in a position to posit what will look appealing to graduate programs in ten years, and they don't even know to ask about some opportunities, or steer their kids toward them.