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A Richer Picture of Student Performance

Digital Portfolio, Chapter 7

Thayer Junior / Senior High School
Winchester, New Hampshire

Contents

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

About the School

Thayer Junior/Senior High School is a public secondary school serving a small town in the southwestern corner of New Hampshire. Over the last fifteen years, Thayer has become a school with a national reputation for its innovations.

Despite its small size, the staff at Thayer had noticed a gap between its students and its faculty; for a variety of reasons, school just didn't seem very important to many of the students. During the 1980's, the school took a number of steps to help connect students to their education.

The school rearranged its daily routine. For four of the six periods, the school is arranged into grade level teams of about 80 students and three to four teachers. The teachers are responsible for the "core" academic subjects, but can arrange the use of time and space during those four periods and among their classrooms for what makes sense. The teachers have daily common planning time to discuss how to best use each day's and week's time.

Teachers also act as advisors. Rather than a traditional homeroom period, each teacher has a group of 15 to 20 students, who stay with that teacher (as an advisor) throughout their years at Thayer. The advisor gets to know the student both academically and personally, and can serve as an advocate for the student.

These innovations were closely followed by changes in how students are assessed. The school, as one of the charter members of the Coalition of Essential Schools, adopted the notion of exhibitions, and most units taught by the team of teachers end with a public demonstration of students' abilities. Working as an entire staff, the school has worked with a set of skills for graduation, identifying what it is that a student should know and be able to do, and has asked students to prepare portfolios demonstrating their abilities in each of those areas.

Thayer was one of the schools in the original (1990-93) Exhibitions Project, and began to explore how computer technology could be used to help students demonstrate mastery of their abilities. Rick Durkee, the school's computer teacher, and Tom Warner, the computing coordinator for a cluster of school districts (including Winchester) have strived each year to provide a little more computing power and some more technological innovations to the students. What began with some initial "literacy" work to help students become familiar with word processing and spreadsheets has grown where students work with software ranging from HTML editors to Autodesk's 3D Studio and Animator programs.

The school's approach to using computer technology throughout the curriculum has changed over the years. Some years, Rick has been a member of a team, other years, he has floated among the teams. The majority of the school's computers are in a lab directly across from the library. There are regularly scheduled classes in the labs, but they do not always use every computer, and students who want to use computers can pretty much have access to machines when they need them.

During the early part of the 1990's, much of the school's innovations with technology centered on the use of video. Thayer produced a monthly series, distributed via satellite, of educational workshops. The series, called Here, Thayer, and Everywhere, originated from Thayer's library, and was hosted by the school's principal, Dennis Littky. Each workshop focused on a particular aspect of school reform (such as exhibitions or block scheduling), and was truly designed as a workshop for local communities done by a local community. (A second series, called MathWatch, became a companion piece, focusing on innovations in mathematics classrooms.) Producing these monthly workshops meant producing a great deal of video, and the school became used to having video cameras everywhere, recording everything. A core group of students, teachers, and parents became involved in the productions, learning everything from camera work to organizing monthly mailings.

The Digital Portfolio work at Thayer has been an interesting experiment. During the years of this project, the school has wrestled with a number of changes. At the end of the 1993-94 school year, Dennis Littky left Thayer. This came after a number of faculty members left the school for leadership positions at other schools or at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Thus, the school, led by new principal James Butterfield, was in for a transition. The school began a re-examination of its goals and its portfolio system, which was completed towards the end of the 1995-96 school year.

The school also began exploring the possibility of a new "alternative" program to serve a smaller population of students, which occupied some time for several faculty members. Thus, the Digital Portfolios have continued to be an experiment, as the school arranges some of its other systems, and determines how technology can be best integrated into its work. As some of the other systems fall into place, though, Thayer is well poised to take advantage of what Digital Portfolios have to offer: allowing students to demonstrate their abilities and accomplishments in a way that traditional transcripts cannot capture.

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?

The establishment, and revisiting, of the vision, was probably what occupied most of the assessment effort during the years of this study. Around 1990, the school's faculty examined the courses that it taught and the skills that it expected students to gain from those skills. The conversation also included community members, parents, and students. By the time all was said and done, the school had created a list of about 350 different skills that students were supposed to possess upon graduation.

Most schools that create such laundry lists find them unusable. Individual teachers can pick out the skills that they use, but essentially, such lists perpetuate the status quo: individual teachers teaching what they think is important, and little connectivity among the courses. The list had some relevance for teachers in planning courses, but not for determining what a student would truly possess by the time they graduated. Still, the creation of this list was the beginning, not the end, of this work.

After a year or so, a committee of faculty members went back to the list and the curriculum, and tried to find the commonalities among the entries in that long list. The group, working with the faculty as a whole and parents and community members, created the following list of 19 skills that every student needs to possess to graduate:

• Applying scientific concepts within a framework other than that in which they were presented.
• Distinguishing between evidence and opinion.
• Interpreting data and graphs.
• Understanding, interpreting, and deriving meaning from written materials.
• Developing and applying strategies to solve multi-step problems.
• Understanding the consequences of technology and development on society and the environment.
• Organizing and presenting information in an orderly and systematic manner.
• Researching a topic by compiling, citing, and organizing information.
• Giving oral expression to ideas and information before a group.
• Conveying thoughts and ideas through written expression.
• Starting and finishing multi-faceted projects in academic areas and the arts.
• Cooperating with others to achieve a common goal by sharing ideas and resources.
• Comparing and contrasting information to arrive at an informed conclusion.
• Taking measurements in English and metric units and applying them in a variety of practical, scientific, and mathematical ways.
• Applying a mathematical concept within a framework other than the one in which it was presented.
• Using technology as a tool to access and disperse information, to solve a creative problem, or to make something.
• Exploring a topic independently.
• Formulating open-ended "essential questions" that lead to deeper inquiry.
• Participating as a citizen by identifying, studying, and taking action on civic problems.

We began working with Thayer with the Digital Portfolio shortly after these goals were adopted. Thus, the Digital Portfolio represented two innovations: a new use of technology, and an articulation of the school's vision. In the years that followed, the vision became a bit murkier. The school began a portfolio system where students placed a best entry that met each of these 19 skills. This began a discussion of what these skills actually represented -- some were clearer than others, and some skills seemed to overlap significantly.

During 1995, the school again began to revisit the vision. This was not a repudiation of the work that had come before, but rather a practical and philosophical clarification of what it really means. By the end of the 1995-96 school year, the school had reduced the list to five General Education Goals, or GEG's. These are:

• Communication
• Problem Solving
• Critical Thinking
• Self-Directed Learning
• Personal and Community Responsibility

This list, though necessarily vaguer, seems to better capture what goes on in classes, and is at a scale that allows every teacher to be able to direct the curriculum and assessment strategies towards a specific set of goals. It is a list that is general enough to be obviously interdisciplinary, but specific enough that it doesn't allow curriculum to go in every possible direction. The portfolio mechanisms to accompany this vision will be put in place starting in the 1996-97 school year.

Assessment

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

How can students demonstrate the vision?

At Thayer, students regularly complete exhibitions as a part of their course work. The school's core teaching is often arranged around "essential questions" (such as "What is a neighbor?" -- or, as the teachers referred to this section, "Neighbor? I hardly know her!"). The interdisciplinary teaching that explored this question brought up issues in both the particular disciplines (understanding the importance of neighboring elements in the periodic table, or what it means to be a neighbor in a democracy), and across them. The exhibitions were typically a kind of project that both showed skills in the individual disciplines and the interdisciplinary nature of the essential question.

Why do we collect student work?

After Thayer adopted its 19 skills, it put a portfolio system in place where students needed to include some piece of work that showed a mastery of each skill. The portfolio system was adopted in all of the grades. Throughout the year, students entered their work into the various folders, and at the end of the year, the student chose one piece for each of his or her courses that would remain for the following year. Thus, the student might have six pieces in the portfolio that, collectively, demonstrated the 19 skills.

This collection was to do two things. First, it gave students the opportunity to show their level of accomplishment towards each of those skills. (Entries in the portfolio were typically marked as "above grade level," "at grade level" or "below grade level."). Second, it encouraged teachers to make sure that their collective teaching covered all of those skills. Since the portfolios became a part of the graduation requirements -- that is, a student needs to demonstrate competency in all 19 skills before graduating -- the teachers realized that the students would need to practice those skills, and thus took responsibility for ensuring that students had those opportunities for practice.

The collection of work was one thing; fitting the work into the set of skills was another. Teachers found themselves assessing work twice: once, as they normally had, and a second time to see where this work stood against the 19 skills. It was difficult to synthesize the portfolio process with the other assessment requirements; knowing where a student stood in a particular course may not be reflected in an examination of the 19 skills. Thus, during the years of this project, the school wrestled with the purpose of using portfolios: there was a general recognition that portfolios could be helpful, but the current organization of 19 skills wasn't quite going to do it. The result of the conversation was a reorganization of the skills into five General Education Goals (as described in the section on vision).

What audiences are most important to us?

The assessment system is primarily designed for local use. New Hampshire's education system is driven almost entirely by local districts (the state provides approximately 8% of the funding required for education, with most of the rest raised by local districts; every other state provides 35% or more of the funding for education), and so the primary audience for the school are the local parents, community members, and, of course, the people in the school: the students, teachers, and administrators.

The school (as is true of just about every other school in the project) continues to use traditional transcripts and credits to describe student work to outside audiences. To the community, however, the school has used a number of methods to show what is happening inside the school. There are regular meetings with local business people, both to describe what is happening at the school, and to arrange for internships or other opportunities for the school to work with the businesses in town. There are open sessions with parents, where student work is available for discussion. Then, there is an annual event where the senior class demonstrates its work. Each senior has a booth, like at a state science fair or a corporate convention. The senior can use the space however he or she likes, but the goal of the exhibition is to show his or her accomplishments and interests. The session is held at the school, and is open to the community, and students need to describe what they have put in their booth, and how it shows his or her skills and abilities.

How do we know what's good?

Students and teachers work together to determine what pieces of work are good enough to be in a portfolio. The school's approach to its vision had been to establish the list of skills, and then see what fell out as students worked to achieve those skills. Students and teachers needed to work together particularly on the pieces that would be retained from year to year, so that the portfolio contained the best possible picture of a student's abilities. (With the use of the Digital Portfolio, the need for just having one piece per subject area became less necessary.)

The difficult part for individual teachers and students was translating an old system of assessment (A's, B's, C's and so on) into an assessment of individual skills. This meant both breaking down the older grades into sub-components, and doing some more holistic work of determining whether a piece demonstrated, say, the skill of cooperation. What helps are the development of rubrics to determine what to look for as a demonstration of mastery of any of the given skills.

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 school's primary computer lab contains 20 IBM PC's linked in a local area network. The lab includes four computers designated as multimedia machines, with slots for video and audio capture cards, and one server. During the project, one machine in the lab was designated for Internet connections. By the 1996-97 school year, the technology system at the school now provides every student with his or her own e-mail account on the Internet, and every machine can access the world wide web. As of February, 1997, the school was averaging 50 e-mail messages a day through the gateway from these 20 machines, and Rick Durkee, the school's computer teacher, reports that "computers are used for web browsing almost constantly when a computer is available for it."

The Digital Portfolios are kept in individual student accounts on the network server, so that students may work on their portfolios from any machine.

Thayer received, as part of this grant, 15 IBM PC 350 computers, with 486 DX2-66 processors, 8 megabytes of RAM, and 270 megabyte hard drives. The school's 4 multimedia machines 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 8640-ONJ, with 32 megabytes of RAM, a 486 DX2-66 processor, and a 2.1 gigabyte hard drive. Each machine also had an IBM Token Ring network card, used Microsoft Windows 95 as the operating system, and ran Novell Netware for the network.

Who are the primary users of the equipment?

The computer lab is primarily used by students. While there are classes scheduled in the lab, students who need to use a computer can usually get access to a machine. The key to computer usage is the integration of computer skills into the curriculum; for some of the school's teams, this is more a priority than for others. Still, during the course of the six years in the school, every student has a number of units with concentrated time for developing technology skills.

The goal for student use of technology can be summarized by the following excerpt from a grant proposal written by Rick Durkee and Tom Warner:

"[Students] can complete the cycle of learning that Thayer has developed as its model for the digital information age:

1. Access: to give students easy access to information that is current and based on reliable research. Access to the Internet is the essential door to local, national and international sources of information.

2. Capture: to give students the tools to capture information from CD, online databases and live experiments/performances. Video equipment, scientific probes, digitizing boards and scanners will allow teachers and students to digitize images and information not presently in digital form.

3. Create: To give students the tools to analyze information: statistical packages, spreadsheets, accounting programs, and charting programs. The Internet will give students access to resources that can give the learner feedback from skilled individuals in their field of study.

4. Exhibit: to give students the tools and techniques to exhibit what they have learned and present it in a manner that will be accessible to their teachers, classmates, community and other schools ... Desktop publishing programs, HTML editors, spreadsheets will be used to produce quality exhibitions what will be reviewed and evaluated online by a host of community and national experts.

...The concept of a cycle is important: as the quality of the exhibitions improves, these works will be preserved digitally as resource information for future students to access. As each new student attempts similar exhibitions he will have to try to attempt a higher standard (i.e., improve upon) the exhibitions that came before. This will help eliminate the routine reports and term papers that proliferate the traditional high school experience. Students will also have models of exhibitions with evaluators' feedback attached so the learner will become more clear on just what a high standard for performance represents. Even areas that are difficult to standardize (art, music, creative writing) can have clear examples of excellence with critiques from experts. Sample video clips for areas such as Debate, Drama, Dance, Public Speaking, etc., can be captured and stored locally and on the Internet server.

Who will support the system?

Rick Durkee, the school's computer teacher, has primary responsibility for supporting the network and the computers in the school. A core group of student volunteers help with many aspects of the work, from making backups to finding resources on the World Wide Web.

The computer lab is strategically positioned across from the library and main office, near the main entrance to the school. The school itself is not that large, and every student and teacher passes by the computer room at least once a day. Since Rick is in the lab most of the day, the students and faculty know where to turn for support. Beyond Rick's substantial skills and knowledge with technology, the school is also fortunate to have a district technology coordinator, Tom Warner, who both understands the technological goals and the pedagogical goals of the school. While Tom's work requires him to be in three different districts, he is able to spend enough time at Thayer to help with the strategic planning.

Students play a critical role in the support of Thayer's technology. They provide support for the school's network, installing and upgrading software on the individual machines. One group of students can act as network supervisors. They are able to maintain the network in that capacity, and can adjust user accounts as needed. This places a great deal of trust in the students, allowing them access to just about all information on the system except confidential administrative and special education data. Rick writes that the students "support teacher and student users with applications and hardware problems. They support hardware and software outside of the computer room, which allows me to stay in the computer room."

Two of the other sites in the project (Croton-Harmon and University Heights) hired Rick and Tom to help with their network installations. They brought Dan Fairbanks, a senior at the time, to help with the installation. Well, help may be the wrong word; as Rick put it, Dan "was actually in charge of most technical portions of the install, because he has done more Netware installs than I have and he could complete the tasks much faster than either Tom or I could have." The trust and support for students interested in technology makes the technology system work and says things about Thayer's overall culture.

There are a number of teachers on grade-level teams that also have an interest in technology, and work with their students to integrate technological skills into the curriculum. The school's culture of cooperation plays well here, where Rick can work with those teachers to design activities and exhibitions, where students can use the technology well towards the larger educational goals of the project or curriculum.

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?

Most of the students who created digital portfolios were part of Rick Durkee's team. Working with the other teachers on his team, Rick created a regular schedule for when students would be in the computer lab; as needed, the schedule could be adjusted, depending on what the other teachers on the team planned to do on any given day. Also, individual students can use the lab if space is available; unfortunately, not as many students had opportunities to go out of a "regular" class to use the computer lab as one might hope.

The computer lab time usually has a loose structure. Students have projects, such as the Digital Portfolio, that need to be completed before certain deadlines. There is time for students to learn specifics about certain hardware or software, such as how to use the scanner, or how to create an figure using Autodesk 3D Studio, but most of the time in the lab is spent on completing projects.

Students, then, are responsible for creating their own portfolios, and for finding the time to use them. They could turn to Rick for support, or to the core group of "techie" students for help with specific tasks (such as digitizing graphics). The time structure allowed students to develop their portfolios over the course of the year, and, for those students who had regularly scheduled computer time anyway, used the time to create their work in a digital form (i.e., using a word processor or spreadsheet) in the first place.

Who will select the work?

Students ultimately select the work to go into the portfolio. They know that they have to include work that, collectively, demonstrates all 19 skills before they graduate, and work with their teachers, and their advisor to determine what work best demonstrates their skills. The teachers provide guidance both explicitly ("this should go into your portfolio") and implicitly (by grading projects as "above grade level" or through other assessments, indicating to the student that a particular entry is worth saving).

Who will reflect on the work?

There are multiple opportunities for reflecting on a student's portfolio. (For the most part, Thayer is working with paper portfolios; one or two grade levels are working with digital portfolios at the moment.) First and foremost, students have daily time in "advisory," where students discuss their academic progress with a teacher who gets to know them well. There are also formal structures for reviewing portfolios. Advisors are expected to meet with students individually to review the portfolios, and the teachers on the team also help students to select pieces to include in the portfolio. At the portfolio meeting with the advisors (which are supposed to take place quarterly), the students work with the teachers to cull the portfolio, choosing up to six pieces (one per course) to continue to retain in the portfolio. (As the school moves to Digital Portfolios, however, students may want to keep more pieces in their portfolio.) Finally, there are opportunities, such as the senior exhibition day, where students demonstrate what they have accomplished in a public setting attended by teachers, parents, administrators, and community members.

Still, the school is wrestling with its use of time. The process of selecting exhibitions, assessing them, and redoing them as necessary, is time consuming. With many innovations happening at Thayer, it's hard to make time for everything, and with the portfolio system still in flux, many of the faculty did not get involved. The school had numerous discussions about portfolios and assessment, and there was some understanding that Digital Portfolios would help. The determination of a smaller set of goals can help everyone get their heads around what portfolios can do; for Digital Portfolios to take hold, new kinds of time structures may have to be put in place.

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?

At Thayer, staff communication has been one of the central tenets of innovative practice. Teachers have regularly scheduled daily planning time with the other members of the same team. There are also weekly staff meetings where the school discusses its goals and its next steps in reform.

Student work is discussed in conjunction with the school's ongoing work with assessment and with establishing its vision. Teams of teachers certainly discuss the progress of individual students, and advisors, in their roles as advocates, discuss a student's progress or problems with the teachers involved. While the school has not created formal mechanisms for discussing student work, such as the roundtables at University Heights, the faculty regularly turns to what students have created as an indication of the progress of various innovations. Most importantly, the school has a culture of discussing important issues, and of teachers working to try to create a coherent direction for the school as a whole.

Is the school open to tuning standards? With whom?

The school's process of establishing its vision was very open. Throughout the creation of the various lists of skills and goals, small groups of faculty, with the principal, did the legwork to begin the conversation, but it was quickly opened to the entire faculty, to students, and to the school community. Parents, business people, school board members, and other community folks were regularly invited to the school to hear about the school's progress, and to see what students have done. They were also involved in the process that led to the school's lists of skills. The faculty and principal felt it was important that the community and parents not just rubber-stamp a pre-approved list, but to have a chance for substantial input.

Again, the school has not done so much with creating formal structures for communicating its standards, but it has done a great deal with establishing an open dialogue. Regular meeting time among the faculty and between the faculty and parents and students helps to keep everyone focused on what the school considers important. Regular open houses and events for the community and business people allow the school to show what students are capable of doing, and how the school is helping all students to reach those standards of achievement.

The Products: Sample Digital Portfolios

The opening screen of Thayer's Digital Portfolios begins with an introduction to the student. The front page shows the student's name, and a menu near the bottom of the screen. Clicking on the "Photo" option on the menu displays the student's photo; clicking on the "Information" option displays additional information about the student.

Clicking on the "Menu" option displays the main menu. This menu corresponds to the set of 19 goals that the school has established for all students. When the user clicks on the round button next to any of the goals, the software displays an explanation of that goal. Those goals that contain exhibitions are highlighted; the others are dimmed.

When a user clicks on one of the folders next to a highlighted goal, the user sees a second menu, displaying the student's performances that meet that goal. Clicking on any of the performances in this menu displays the actual student work.

This figure shows one example exhibition from a portfolio.

The student work is shown on the left. One component of the work immediately appears when the entry is displayed, and other components may be available. Underneath the student work window is a menu with the words Text, Graphics, Audio and Video. Clicking on any of those options shows a list of the corresponding components of the entry; choosing the component's name displays it on the screen.

On the right side is a window which helps to put the student work in context. A menu along the bottom shows the different pieces of information that can be displayed:

The Skills button shows a list of the 19 skills that are demonstrated by this particular entry. The skills in the list correspond to those found on the main menu. The "Skill Levels" window also shows if the student is at, above, or below grade level in his or her progress.

The Assignment describes what the student was asked to do.

The Evaluation area contains assessments from the teachers, or others, about the work. When you click on Evaluation, a list of people who have already assessed this exhibition is displayed; clicking on any of those names displays that person's assessment of the work. Assessors can include any reader of the portfolio, including peers, teachers, parents, or outside judges; a reader can click on the Add Evaluation button to add his or her thoughts to the portfolio.

The menus along the top menu bar allow a student to modify the portfolio. The student can modify the overall portfolio information (name, date, etc.), add, delete, or modify performances in the portfolio, and add or delete different media components to a performance. The software also allows evaluations to be added, edited, or modified; whether that is done by the student or by an evaluator depends on the school.

Further Information

Contact
Thayer High School 85 Parker Street, PO Box 7
Winchester, NH 03470
603-239-4381
James Butterfield, Principal
Rick Durkee, Computer Coordinator/Teacher/Network Manager
Tom Warner, Technology Director, NH School Administrative Unit 38
http://www.keenesentinel.com/educatn/thayerpage/thayer.html

Publications
A Town Torn Apart, NBC-TV movie, first aired November 30, 1992.

Cushman, Kathleen, "A School Raises Its Community's Expectations," Performance, Number 6, May 1994, Providence RI: Coalition of Essential Schools.

Kammerad-Campbell, Susan, Teacher: Dennis Littky's Fight for a Better School, New York: Penguin Books, 1989.

McDonald, Joseph P., Redesigning School: Lessons for the 21st Century, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996, Chapter 4.

(A series of videotapes, first broadcast on satellite, on various issues on reform is available from the Big Picture Company, 275 Westminster Street, Providence, RI 02903. The tapes include two years of monthly episodes of Here, Thayer, and Everywhere, which focus on whole school change, and one year of monthly episodes of MathWatch, which focus on changes in mathematics teaching.)

Original material, Copyright 1997.

David Niguidula
Coalition of Essential Schools
Annenberg Institute for School Reform

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