Last Updated on Saturday, August 02, 2008 at 10:03 PM
The Writing Portfolio is a part of the Commonwealth Accountability Test System (CATS) at grades 4, 7 and 12. The portfolio is a compilation of student work, chosen by the student, to display that student’s best writing pieces.
Portfolios at the 4th and 7th grades consist of three pieces: reflective, personal expressive or literary, and transactive.
• The 4th grade students do not have to identify a content piece in the table of contents since the Ungraded Primary encourages elementary teachers to utilize interdisciplinary units of study, making content identification sometimes difficult.
• The 7th grade students will need to identify a content area piece other than English/Language Arts.
The 12th grade portfolio consists of four pieces: reflective, personal expressive or literary, transactive, and transactive w/analytical or technical focus.
• One piece will be from a content area other than the required English courses.
• All grade levels will have a choice of selecting either a personal expressive or a literary piece for their accountability portfolio.
In the 2006-07 school-year, the Kentucky Board of Education recommended changing to an analytic scoring rubric to align the state with national standards and to improve writing skills by giving more precise feedback to the writer. The analytic rubric offers several advantages over the holistic rubric, including the ability to identify the areas of strengths and weaknesses of the writer in content, structure, or conventions. Analytical scoring means readers will score three separate areas of writing in one piece at a time. Scores will then be added together to arrive at a raw composite score. This score will then be used to determine the student’s overall performance level based on scale scores and cut points.
Portfolios are due on the first day of the KCCT testing window. Districts may file a request for an extension of portfolio development for schools on block schedules.