Over at Flypaper, Mike Petrilli drops a bombshell. He was on a talk show this morning with, among others, Greg Toppo of USA Today and Melody Barnes of the Obama campaign.
We discussed the candidates’ education proposals, and all went according to plan until about halfway through the segment when Melody said that Obama wanted to look at different kinds of student assessments, including portfolios. Portfolios? As Greg and I said on the air, this was news. We’re not aware of the Obama camp ever saying before that portfolios might be part of the mix. I’m pretty sure I could hear Kati Haycock screaming from a few miles away.
As Mike points out, portfolios were found to be completely unreliable as large-scale accountability measures years ago. “Let me make a prediction,” writes Petrilli, ”either the Obama campaign will clarify that the Senator would consider portfolios on top of tests, not instead of them, or the McCain campaign will pounce on this issue and argue that it shows Obama to be weak on reform. Because one thing is for sure: embracing portfolios is a clear signal of an intention to roll back accountability.”
Portfauxlio Update: Michele McNeil at Campaign K-12 says Obama talkin’ about alternate assessment is nothing new and no big deal.
Update II: More from Petrilli. “I respectfully disagree with McNeil,” he notes. ”It still sounds to me that Barnes is talking about portfolios instead of standardized tests..” He suggests the Obama campaign could clarify: are you in favor of continuing standardized testing under NCLB, or not?
Update III: Over at TWIE, A-Rus has a fairly persuasive Obama quote from earlier in the campaign that sheds light on the Portfauxlio affair: “This doesn’t mean that we won’t have a standardized test, I believe children should master that skill as well and that should be part of the assessments and tools that we use to make sure our children are learning. It just can’t dominate the curriculum to the extent where we are pushing aside those things that will actually allow children to improve and will accurately assess the quality of teaching that is taking place in the classroom. This is not an either/or proposition, it is a both/and proposition, and that’s what we will be working on by fixing NCLB.”
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