Home > Resources > Classroom Practice > Assessment > Digital Portfolio

A Richer Picture of Student Performance

Digital Portfolio, Chapter 5

Croton-Harmon High School
Croton-on-Hudson, New York

Contents

- About the School
- The Process: Issues in Implementation
    - Vision
    - Assessment
    - Technology
    - Logistics
    - Culture
- The Products: Sample Digital Portfolios
- Further Information

About the School

Croton-Harmon High School (CHHS) is a public school in Croton-on-Hudson, a town of about 7,000 residents located 32 miles north of New York City. CHHS is the district's single high school, serving students in grades 9 through 12. About 315 students attend CHHS, and each year about 85 students graduate.

CHHS has been a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools since 1991. As a member of the Coalition, CHHS is dedicated to the belief that all students can learn, that students' intellects are best stimulated when they become active learners, and that optimal learning takes place in a personalized atmosphere. The school has developed programs to encourage students to use their minds well and to contribute in the promotion of a democratic school community.

In 1992, CHHS was selected by the New York State Education Department as one of 13 original Compact Partnership Schools because of its leadership in school reform. CHHS has become a lead school in the state for the development of grading rubrics and alternative forms of assessment.

Throughout their four years of study, students are encouraged to become life-long learners by participating in debates, Socratic seminars, and cooperative learning groups. The daily life of the school includes many opportunities for students, including community service, a bi-weekly "advisory program" focused on communication, leadership skills and school-related issues, and a rigorous curriculum including AP courses. The school sends over 85% of its graduating seniors to college.

The Croton-Harmon School District has long had a reputation as a "good" school district, and the town's residents have supported the schools, both financially (through the passing of budgets and bond issues) and politically. In the 1990's, the district became involved with several reform initiatives, aiming to improve the education received by all students in the district. When the district was approached in 1993 about becoming involved with the Digital Portfolio project, Sherry King, the Croton-Harmon Superintendent, talked with the district's three principals, faculty members, students, school board members, and parent and community groups. They concluded that this effort would help the district's overall effort in examining assessments that would better demonstrate each student's achievements and abilities. (For more information about the work of the other schools in the district, see the chapters on Pierre van Cortlandt Middle School, and Carrie E. Tompkins Elementary School.)

CHHS, which had been working with exhibitions for several years, saw the Digital Portfolio as an opportunity to bring together a number of alternative assessment efforts within the school, and a way to marry the technology and assessment issues that the school was tackling.

During the study, from 1994 to 1996, about 12 students at the school developed Digital Portfolios. In the first year, one senior, who was serving on the technology committee, put together a sample portfolio as a demonstration. After making some adjustments to the software, a second group of seniors developed digital portfolios throughout the next school year.

The Process: Issues in Implementation

Vision

A school's vision helps students, parents, and faculty to understand what is expected of students.

What should a student know and be able to do?

Vision statements are often long laundry lists of items to be covered in the curriculum. Before the Digital Portfolio project began, a committee at Croton-Harmon High School called the Building Planning Council, worked to create a statement that all faculty and students could use to benchmark all of their work. After many discussions with parents, students, and faculty, the Building Planing Council came up with the following set of three outcomes for graduates:

Problem Solving:To be able to solve a problem in a given domain through defining and framing the problem, designing and implementing suitable problem solving strategies for that domain, and reaching a defensible solution. Typical strategies include gathering evidence, drawing inferences, and posing alternatives.

Communication:To be able to communicate substantive ideas effectively and confidently to various audiences by using appropriate verbal, written and/or artistic strategies. To be able to demonstrate that one is listening by responding intelligently to others' comments/ideas, asking perceptive questions, and reflecting verbally and/or in writing about what was conveyed.

Research: To be able to take a given topic, frame a question, recognize, find and use a variety of appropriate resources to address the topic and question, and bring the findings together in to a coherent presentation.

As shown in the screen shots, these outcomes became the main menu for Croton's Digital Portfolio. Each student is asked to think about the question "Who am I as a learner?" and to consider his or her abilities as a communicator, problem solver, and researcher.

The school then developed a second dimension for the vision, asking students to consider the abilities of communication, problem solving, and researching in each of the four primary subject areas of the school (Humanities, Math/Science/Technology, Wellness and Health, and Fine Arts). The portfolio thus has spaces for entries from any course in the school -- and also encourages teachers to consider how each course will address the primary skills.

Assessment

The school's assessment system lets students learn about their progress towards fulfilling the vision.

How can students demonstrate the vision?

CHHS has achieved a statewide, and, indeed national reputation as a school working with alternative assessments. The school's work with print portfolios began with the ninth and tenth grade humanities teams, and has since expanded to the school's other disciplines. (For more details on one particular exhibition -- the humanities "debate tournament" -- please see the New York Assessment Collection.)

In all of its work with assessment, the school has focused on determining what it wants its students to know and be able to do, and then creating exhibitions and rubrics that allow students to demonstrate those skills and knowledge. While much of this work began with individual teachers and subject areas, the school as a whole has moved towards a common set of goals (see the vision section), and now shares its efforts internally among staff and with the community.

In just about every class, students are expected to exhibit their mastery of the subject through a portfolio and / or exhibition of work. In addition, students complete a final exhibition in their senior year. This senior exhibition, known as CHOOSE (Croton-Harmon Options and Opportunities for Seniors Experience), allows students to explore a topic in depth, that demonstrates both the intellectual skills that high school graduates are expected to possess and allow students to "extend their thinking beyond the classroom." Although CHOOSE is voluntary, typically 90% of the students participate. The school describes CHOOSE in this way:

Senior Options (CHOOSE) is a culminating academic experience that invites students to apply their cumulative knowledge and skills to an area of personal interest. In lieu of attending traditional classes, students spend their last eight weeks of high school serving as interns in an apprenticeship out in the greater community. Students keep a daily journal of their experiences and complete a research project. The experience concludes with an exhibition by each student before an evaluation committee composed of faculty members, community members and fellow students. In selecting an internship, students are encouraged to seek placement that will give them a preview of a career they may wish to pursue or will allow them to explore an area of particular interest.

CHHS's work with alternative assessments and grading rubrics has been carefully reviewed by educators in the community, and throughout the state. As the school's 1996 profile points out, "Acknowledging the high quality of our work, the State Board of Regents has approved Croton-Harmon's internally developed final assessments to replace the standard Regents Exams in Global Studies, English, American History, and Physics. Select portions of the Regents in French, Spanish, Sequential Math I, II, and III, Earth Science, Biology, and Chemistry have also been replaced with locally developed assessments."

Why do we collect student work?

The purpose of the portfolio was the center of just about every conversation around the Digital Portfolio project. The school clearly had a purpose for the portfolios and exhibitions used in individual classrooms, but the Digital Portfolio brought forward a set of issues regarding what a school-wide portfolio is, and how it would be used.

Throughout the project, the students, the faculty and community committees examining Digital Portfolios continually revisited the question of purpose. Two types of purposes emerged in the school's conversations. Portfolios could be used for "celebration," focusing on those things that a student has done well. Portfolios might also be used as an "assessment" device; in the conversations, this meant examining the student's work for all of his or her current abilities, and how to help the student improve in all areas.

The students saw that the Digital Portfolios would be a good way to present themselves to other audiences, and reflect on their work. As one student wrote, "I learned more about myself than I had thought possible. In deciding what pieces to include, I looked at everything I had accomplished in the past three years, both at school and at home. While the finished product is important, the act of looking through my previous work was even more important." The same student cautioned, however, that unless the school could determine its purposes for using the portfolio, it would "remain a meaningless 'curiosity.'"

For the school's faculty, the Digital Portfolios were part of an ongoing conversation about the ultimate uses of portfolios. The purposes often focused on the audiences -- are they useful to college admissions officers? To helping students find a job? To us in learning more about our students? Some in the school think a graduation-by-portfolio process would be appropriate, but this has not been explicitly discussed throughout the school.

The conversation continues at the school. The current thought is to tie together portfolios done in individual classes or teams (such as in a Science Research experience in the 10th, 11th and 12th grades) with the Digital Portfolio, and learn if the software tool might help coordinate the various individual portfolio efforts going on in the school -- rather than making the school-wide portfolio an entirely new entity.

What audiences are most important to us?

Throughout the project, CHHS has focused on using the Digital Portfolio as an activity for student learning and reflection. First and foremost, the Digital Portfolio provides an opportunity for students to show who they are as researchers, problem solvers, communicators, and individuals, and to reflect on the work they have done during their years at the school.

The faculty also is a critical audience for the use of portfolios, generally, in the school. Just about every course has an exhibition or portfolio component, and the faculty have become very adept at helping students collect, select and reflect on the work that they have put together. But while faculty members certainly have a need for looking at the portfolios developed in their own classes, it will be interesting to find out if they regularly look at portfolios developed by the same students in other classes. In such a small school, it may be that the process of creating the portfolio will help faculty learn enough about students, that the faculty themselves are not a primary audience for reviewing school-wide digital portfolios.

Audiences that are external to the school came up in just about every conversation. Most of the school's seniors (over 85%) go on to higher education, and thus college admissions offices are a primary consideration in discussions about portfolios. (Kathy Mason, the school's principal, has participated in conferences co-sponsored by the Coalition of Essential Schools and the College Board about the transition from high school to college for students from schools involved in reform, and has also been involved in similar conversations among New York State high schools and the state university (SUNY) system.)

The reaction from admissions officers, generally, to the Digital Portfolio and other types of performance assessments, are that they are interesting, and definitely provide more information than traditional transcripts and test scores. What isn't clear is what the admissions officers should do with the portfolios when they receive them; pilot projects in a number of venues (including efforts at the Universities of Wisconsin, Oregon, and California) are helping to explore how portfolios could be helpful in the admissions and placement process.

Parents have been very enthusiastic about digital portfolios. Parents were invited to a "symposium" at the end of the 1995-96 school year, where they saw student work, including Digital Portfolios, on display. The parents enjoyed seeing their students' work in new ways, and remarked that they were impressed that their children are doing significant work with technology.

How do we know what's good?

Students at CHHS involved in the project individually set their own criteria for what should be included in their Digital Portfolio. Not all of the students were explicit about what they wanted to include, but the years of practice with portfolios in other classes gave the students a sense of what kind of work was acceptable and what was not, and how to build an overall picture of achievement. (In the students' earliest portfolios, in 9th and 10th grade humanities, students collect a number of "benchmark" performances, from larger projects in the class, as well as some smaller assignments, such as shorter writing pieces, to show a variety of work.)

All of the work in the portfolio had been previously assessed, and that feedback was one criteria for selection. It's also worth noting that the students in this pilot project were seniors, reflecting back on all of the work they had done in the school. The process of selection might be different for students accumulating their portfolios as they progress through the school. Still, by doing the collection during senior year, students had an opportunity to reflect on the work which made them proudest.

The school does not have a rubric for scoring school-wide portfolios, and such may not be necessary if there are a set of portfolios assessed individually within classes. Much depends on what other audiences, such as parents, state department personnel, or college admissions officers, might request.

Technology

Digital Portfolios are obviously dependent on the use of technology, but a school's effective use of technology goes beyond the use of equipment.

What hardware, software, and networking will we need?

The community of Croton-on-Hudson passed a bond issue that allowed the district to wire its three schools into a wide-area network, and to install local-area networks in each of the buildings. This wiring work began in the summer of 1996, which was after the official end of the Digital Portfolio study. However, the technology implementation helped the school develop some strategies for using hardware, software, and networking.

For the purposes of the pilot, CHHS set up a room off of the school's library with half a dozen IBM multimedia computers. While these machines were available to all students, the 12 students involved in the Digital Portfolio pilot were given access priority. These IBM machines were set up on a small internal network, allowing students to work on any of the machines in the computer room.

Students used a variety of software tools to create their portfolios. A number of the students had access to computers at home, and used word processing software; these files were then translated into rich text (.rtf) format before importing them into the portfolio. A few of the students also used multimedia software to digitize video or audio. One student also found a "morphing" program that generated digital movies; he scanned in some of his formal school pictures, and created a little movie called "I grow up...".

Students reported that it did not take that much time to place an entry in the portfolio; scanning or word processing the document required much more time.

CHHS received, as part of the grant, 8 IBM PC 350 computers, with 486 DX2-66 processors, 4 to 8 megabytes of RAM, and 540 megabyte hard drives, and sound cards. The school's 6 multimedia machines (which were the ones primarily used for developing digital portfolios during the pilot years) were IBM PC 350 machines, with 486 DX4-100 processors, CD-ROM drives, an upgraded hard drive (to 540 megabytes), 16 megabytes of RAM, and sound cards; one machine also contained a video digitizing card. The school also had an IBM PC server 86400NJ, with 16 megabytes of RAM, a 486 DX2-66 processor, and 1 gigabyte hard drive. Each machine also had an IBM 10BaseT Ethernet card, and ran Novell Netware for the network. The school also used a Hewlett-Packard flatbed scanner.

Who are the primary users of the equipment?

Almost exclusively, the students were the primary users of this equipment. The school's computer teaching assistant was often the only staff member present in the technology room. The school assumed that students could be trusted with the equipment, and for the most part, students did their work on their portfolios on "their own" time. (At CHHS, seniors have more flexible schedules, since a block of their time is devoted to the CHOOSE, or final exhibition, development.)

As the network is installed to wire the building, the assumption is that more of the faculty will be able to access computer equipment. Much of the staff uses computer technology in one form or another, but because the school has not previously had its classrooms wired, it was difficult to share information easily among those machines. Students may then be able to enter work into their portfolios from any classroom, or teachers may review students' portfolios with them without going to the computer room.

Who will support the system?

Maura Koch was hired by the Croton-Harmon School District to serve as the high school's full-time computer training assistant. Maura provides technical support by installing hardware, software, and networking; troubleshooting machines that are not working correctly; providing assistance to teachers and students when they have needs; and helping to develop some plans for the school's overall computing work. Needless to say, this is a big job. Still, Maura has been particularly effective in helping the school with its plans because she has worked with the principal, Kathy Mason, members of the faculty, and various committees to help see how the technology fits into the school's overall mission, rather than looking at the technology as an end in itself.

Logistics

The creation of a school-wide digital portfolio requires that a school consider its use of time and space.

When will information be digitized? Who will do it?

During the pilot year of working with Digital Portfolios, the 12 seniors digitized work on their own time. Most of the students had access to computers at home, but used both home and school computers to enter their work. Now, because these students were seniors, their schedules were more flexible; students working on their senior exhibitions (known as the Senior Options, or CHOOSE) have a block of eight weeks with time to do work independently.

The students digitized all of the information. At times, they were able to ask teachers to record an assessment, or use video that had been taken in class or for some other purpose, but this was coordinated by the students.

Who will select the work?

Students selected the work to put into the portfolio. This is slightly different than what happens in individual classes, since the components of this portfolio were largely left up to the students as well. (In most classes in the school, the students are given guidelines for what should be in that course's portfolio.) Still, students chose work that had been previously assessed, and thus, had teachers' feedback on what pieces were considered to be quality work.

The students in this pilot were primarily supervised by Kathy Mason, the school's principal, and Maura Koch, the school's computer teaching assistant. In this relatively small school, and because of her personal style in leading the school, Mrs. Mason has personal relationships with most students at CHHS, and certainly with the group of seniors involved in the pilot. She was thus able to provide some guidance, and some suggestions about elements of the students' overall work that should go in the portfolio, even if she wasn't familiar with every piece that the students had done in other classes. Schools interested in developing portfolios typically find that students need some guidance from the faculty during the selection and creation of the portfolios; if nothing else, it guarantees to the students that someone will be looking at their work.

Who will reflect on the work?

CHHS established a number of opportunities for reviewing digital portfolios. The student team met regularly with the principal, Mrs. Mason, and the faculty received progress reports and looked at portfolios during several faculty meetings throughout the year.

At the end of the year, students presented their digital portfolios in a "Science Research and Technology Symposium." The Symposium had two parts: one for parents and community members, and another (during the day) for the entire faculty. Some other students (besides those on the Digital Portfolio team) also came to the symposium. The purpose of the Symposium was not so much to evaluate any given student's work but to examine the portfolio in this form and start to determine how they could be used for reflection and evaluation.

In the next stage of development, the school's "advisory," which is a bi-weekly meeting of about 12 students with a faculty advisor, may serve as a time for students to reflect, with peers and a faculty member, about their work. One can imagine devoting a few sessions during the year for students to review their portfolios thus far, and to set goals for the next part of the year.

Culture

For digital portfolios to be taken seriously as a school-wide endeavor, the school's culture needs to allow for regular conversation about student work and about the school's standards.

Is the school used to discussing student work?

Bena Kallick, a national consultant who has worked regularly with CHHS, sometimes calls the school "Rubric on the Hudson." This is a school that has achieved a national reputation for its efforts in examining student work, developing alternative assessments, and devising rubrics. The examination of student work has been a cornerstone of the school's work since it became a member of the Coalition of Essential Schools. The school's principal at the time, Sherry King (who later became the district's superintendent, and was responsible for bringing the Digital Portfolio project to the Croton-Harmon school district), worked with the faculty to build on their efforts to effectively assess student work and to gain a better picture of what students know and are able to do.

There are regular times set aside for examining student work. The school's "advisory groups," which are bi-weekly periods where 12 or so students meet with a faculty member, offer an opportunity for students to work with faculty members on their academic goals. Faculty work in teams, and use student work as a basis for much of the conversation and curriculum planning. Regular professional development activities have focused on assessing and examining student work.

The Digital Portfolio brings a couple of new wrinkles. One is the examination of student work in multimedia format; some respondents at the faculty's Symposium to review Digital Portfolios noted that it gives a different impression than one gets on paper, and suggested that the school needs to consider how it would use the Digital Portfolios in relation to the paper ones. Another is the notion of a school-wide portfolio. The Digital Portfolio, as a collection, touches on more areas than any portfolio developed in a single class or by a single team. Among the thoughts of the respondents was that the school might consider how it might develop a rubric for examining a school-wide portfolio.

Another interesting possibility is that the student portfolios might provide a lens for looking at teacher practice as well as student work. What kinds of activities and exhibitions are being done in other classes? Are standards and expectations compatible across the grade levels and the classes?

Is the school open to tuning standards? With whom?

The school's conversations about standards and assessments have been for both internal and external audiences. Perhaps the most visible example was when the New York State Education Department allowed CHHS to use locally developed assessments in lieu of the traditional Regents examinations. The State was saying that its review of Croton's standards and assessments met or exceeded the expectations of the examinations in four subject areas, and in parts of six others. This was clearly a validation of the work that CHHS had done in standards and assessment.

The school and the district also use its affiliations with various national efforts and projects as opportunities to tune their standards with others. Whether it is through school visits, formal presentations at conferences or invitations of parents, consultants, business leaders, or college personnel to visit the school, the CHHS staff has presented its work, not just to show what it is doing, but to allow outsiders to provide feedback, and thus help tune the standards.

Most importantly, the school's faculty (as at the other schools in the district) had regular conversations about its work with students, parents, and community members. Some parents and community members served on school committees to help develop the portfolio plan and to provide feedback on the progress of the plan. Others became involved through their professional connections; for example, some parents who work for IBM and other high-tech firms provided advice and service in putting the technology in place. In other words, parent involvement goes beyond helping with bake sales; there is a conscious attempt to inform parents of what is expected of students at each grade level.

A group have faculty have formed a "Critical Friends' Group," in connection with the Annenberg Institute for School Reform's National School Reform Faculty endeavor. This group is looking to improve teacher practice, and is doing so by examining student work. Through its meetings over two years, the group of faculty will use student work as a method of reflecting on teacher practice and the school's structures.

One particularly interesting attempt at tuning standards came in March, 1995. Each of the three schools in the Croton-Harmon district was preparing to implement Digital Portfolios in the following school year. During one of the annual Superintendent's Conference Days (a professional development day for the district's faculty), the three schools tuned their plans with each other. First, a committee from each school was designated to present the ideas developed at the school. These were all clearly works in progress, and the presentations were not so much to present finished ideas as to get some input as to how to proceed.

Each of these groups then worked through a "tuning protocol." In the protocol, a group presented its work to a set of colleagues. After taking a couple of "clarifying questions" to make sure that all the facts were correct, the presenters stayed silent while the listeners provided some feedback about the presentation. (The feedback was explicitly divided among "warm" and "cool" comments, allowing the commentators to provide feedback that showed both the areas of strength and the areas that needed improvement.) Finally, the presenters responded to some of the listeners' comments. (For further details on tuning protocols, see David Allen's paper "The Tuning Protocol.")

In this case, the schools went through the protocol twice. First, the audience of respondents were teachers from the district's other schools -- that is, the elementary school team presented to a combination of middle and high school teachers, while the rest of the elementary school faculty was listening and reacting to the work done at the other schools. Then, the schools did the protocol with their own faculties, allowing the presenting group to get feedback on the school's plans in the light of what the other schools in the district were doing.

The district protocol provided an opportunity for the faculty at each school to modify their ideas for the portfolio, and allowed the research staff of the project to incorporate those new ideas into the Digital Portfolio software.

The Products: Sample Digital Portfolios

The CHHS Digital Portfolios begin with a set of two screens, corresponding to the two-dimensional vision established by the school. The first screen shows a student's photo, and invites the reader to learn more about the student in three ways:

• Who am I as a Communicator?
• Who am I as a Researcher?
• Who am I as a Problem Solver?

The fourth button, marked "Individual," allows the student to display information about him or herself that might not fit neatly in any of the categories above.

Clicking on any of the four buttons on the main menu screen takes you to a second menu. In the top right corner, you will notice a set of checkboxes. These correspond to the school's four main subject areas:

• Humanities
• Math, Science, and Technology
• Wellness and Health
• Fine Arts

When any of those boxes are checked, those entries in the portfolio that are related to those subjects are displayed in the large window of this menu. In the figure above, you may notice that there are two entries that help answer the question "Who am I as a Problem Solver?" The two entries are marked with an "M," meaning that they represent work in the Math, Science and Technology area.

Clicking on the title of an entry in Figure 2 leads you to the student work. On the left side of the screen are the components of the student work, which may be text, graphics, audio, or video. (In this case, the components include an excerpt from a lab report, a set of calculations, a diagram showing how the experiment was set up, and a video containing a demonstration of the actual experiment.) The right side provides information to help put the work in context (see Figure 4).

The command box shown above appears in the upper right corner of the entry screen (see Figure 3). The left side of the box lists a set of information that helps to put each entry in context. The right side of the box contains buttons that allow you to arrange the components of the entry, or to navigate to another part of the portfolio.

The command box allows the user to view four pieces of information that help to put the work in context:

The Self Reflection allows the student to describe why this entry belongs in the portfolio. In the samples shown here, students often entered work that they had done in prior years, and several students noted that their reflection for why it belongs now is probably different than what they have written immediately after completing the exhibition.

The Assignment describes what the student was asked to do.

The Criteria lists the standards that are to be met by this particular exhibition.

The Assessment contains assessments from the teachers, or others, about the work. When you view the assessment window, you will note that multiple assessors could add their work to a student's portfolio; over time, this could include peer assessors, teachers, or parents.

The right side of the command box allows the user to control views of the portfolio:

A user may move the windows around the screen, and under the Edit menu, choose the "Set Layout" option to store the current layout of windows. The Revert button goes back to the last saved layout of windows.

When a user opens an entry, not all of the components may be immediately visible. All of the components are listed in the box labeled Click for more... ; clicking on the arrow shows the complete list, from which the user may choose one to display. (To save time loading the portfolio, multimedia components are initially hidden, but may be made visible by clicking on the Click for more... list.)

The Menu button returns to the menu of entries, and the Exit button leaves the portfolio.

Further Information

Contact
Croton-Harmon High School
Old Post Road, South
Croton-on-Hudson, NY 10520
914-271-2147
Kathy Mason, Principal
web site: http://www.computer.net/croton-harmon

Publications

Allen, David, "The Tuning Protocol," Studies on Exhibitions, No. 15, Coalition of Essential Schools.**

Graham, Ellen, "Digging for Knowledge," The Wall Street Journal, September 11, 1992, pages B1, B4.

Naiven, Claudia, "Portfolios look past report cards," The (Westchester County) Citizen Register, May 16, 1995.

New York Assessment Collection, a CD-ROM and print publication produced by the Coalition of Essential Schools in collaboration with the New York State Education Department, 1996.**

Young, Douglas, "Digitized Student Portfolios: Learning from the Learner," NSEE (National Society for Experiential Education) Quarterly, Winter 1996.

**(These publications may be ordered from the CES National's Web Site)

Original material, Copyright 1997.

David Niguidula
Coalition of Essential Schools
Annenberg Institute for School Reform

>> printer version

About CES | CES Network | Fall Forum | Small Schools Project | Resources
My Homebase | Jobs | Search | Site Map | Contact Us | Home