Portfolio grading gets an "A"

When I did my field observations, I graded all the written work that the students turned in. For some of the assignments my mentor teacher had a rubric, but for many, she did not. The first assignment I graded took me hours to get through because I was new at it and I wanted to give each student some comments on their work. As a student myself, I am more interested in a teacher’s comments because it is through these comments that I learn what I am doing well as well as what I can do to improve my writing. I had no previous experience with grading, nor any formal instruction other than the instruction that my mentor teacher gave me as I began grading. Later, as my mentor teacher was checking my results, I watched her raise the grade on nearly every single paper. When I asked her to explain why, she said that she doesn’t grade in that strict a manner because otherwise it would dishearten the students. I was truly appalled by this notion! Again, speaking as a student, if I thought for one moment that any of my teachers were grading my work “loosely” so as not to dishearten me, it would demean the entire assignment for me, and the grade would have no value. While I do believe that some of the grades I gave needed to be raised,(because I graded for everything… content, relevance and even grammar!) there were many papers that I still believe should have retained their original grade. Eventually I got the hang of her grading style and graded accordingly … it was, after all, HER class. But I told myself that when I finally had my own class, I didn’t want to grade like that. I wanted the grades I give to actually have more of a connection to the work performed and the lessons taught. However, I didn’t, and still really don’t, know how to accomplish that goal.

After reading about holistic scoring, I find myself agreeing with Williams in that there is so much room for error here. In an ideal situation, holistic scoring may be the answer to the amount of time a teacher must spend on assessment, but given factors like following the protocol incorrectly, or having students who are not clear on the procedure, the reliability of this approach to assessment is suspect. I much prefer portfolio grading. In one of my first college composition classes, my professor used this approach. In this class we wrote a total of 6 essays, each of which was 4-6 pages in length. The professor had us turn in the first draft of each paper and gave us a few comments on each, but did not grade them. When it was time for midterms, we chose 2 of the 3 papers we had completed by then, and turned those in for grading. When it was time for finals, we chose 3 of the 6 papers completed, and that was the writing on which our final grade was based. Without the stress of assessment placed on each individual paper, the professor was free to comment on the writing and give insightful advice. Since the teacher comments increased, I learned more from these papers than if there had been a grade attached to it.

As a side note, I wish that a part of the undergrad education program here at PSU included a class on assessment. I will begin student teaching in a few short weeks having had no experience in writing a rubric or assessments of any kind. This is one of several things that make me feel less than ready.