The Holistic vs. Portfolio Debate

Because I have no teaching or even student teaching experience, and haven't read any Middle or High School papers other than my son's or the ones I wrote years ago, I feel a little leery of weighing in on methods of evaluating writing. I'm sure seasoned teachers would have very strong opinions based on their own successes and failures, and I'd be very curious to learn how they feel about Holistic vs. Portfolio Grading.

In general, however, I am somewhat suspicious of Holistic Grading because it gives students the task of grading other students at an age of extreme self-consciousness, gossipy-ness and heavily emotional social dyamics. I realize that students' names are removed -- so that David doesn't know he's grading Kate's paper or vice versa -- but I still know that as a teen I would have felt very awkward knowing my paper was going to be read by other kids. Teenage me probably also would have been distracted by constantly wondering "now, whose paper is this?"

I am much more comfortable with the idea of Portfolio Grading. I like the way it empowers students to select their best writings and discard the lesser ones. I think knowing they won't have to be graded on everything will help them become braver, more experimental writers rather than just grade-conscious, rule-following drones. I am not clear, however, why it's imperative that several teachers collaborate on Portfolio Grading, or that it's even a practical idea. The teaching loads and home responsibilities of individual teachers might make it very hard for them to arrange mutually convenient times to meet.

I also have some issues with Williams' rubrics for grading. I wish they had been presented as lists of criteria or bullet points, because in paragraph form they are hard to read and distinguish from each other. Also, I think any grade an English teacher gives, no matter how objective and rubric-based it purports to be, will always be something of a matter of opinion. The "Holistic" grades Williams gives to the sample essays seem reasonable, but I wonder if all real-life student essays are so easily pigeon-holed.