To the editor:
I am a parent of a child in a NYC public school. I would never trade the rigors of portfolio assessment for the Regents exam approach – although my daughter might!

After all, she worked nearly 200 hours to research, plan, draft, and revise to create her exhibition reports and prepare for oral defense. I observed her oral presentation and the resulting discussion and defense. I would stack it up against the most grueling business and graduate school presentations I have participated in!

The school my daughter attends reflects the wonderful diversity of NYC. Still, each year every student is measured by the same ruler: his or her portfolio of work subject-by-subject and committee review of their exhibition projects.

We chose this school from among many fine schools in the city. Please support our ability to choose the quality of education that our children continue to receive.

Sincerely,
Cathy S. Cooper

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Dear Times:
My son is in the ninth grade at the School of the Future, a consortium school in Manhattan, where he also attended Middle School. Each year, he selects subjects of interest for investigation, delves deeply, writes up his reports for a portfolio, which he then presents and defends to a jury of his peers and adults, including his teachers and the school principal. I feel this method is infinitely superior to a standards-test based approach to education. As a Stuyvesant HS grad myself, I'm familiar with both methods. The portfolio system is rather analogous to what used to be called "investigative journalism," back in the old days when that was still practiced, as opposed to the current standard of attending press conferences, recording a bunch of "facts," and spewing them back on paper.

Ron Brawer

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Dear Reader:
My ninth grade son attends one of the consortium schools in New York City Department of Education. He finds the work he needs to do for his portfolio very challenging. He told me he wished he went to a school that gives traditional tests, because "those tests are a lot easier" than what the students in his school need to do, which is authentic research and defense of their work. I am happy he goes to the school he goes to, because the challenge he is facing there is much more like the challenges he will face during the rest of his life.
Noah Lewin

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Dear Editor:

This letter was prompted by the harsh June 17th NYTimes editorial "Education Standards are Under Assault" which followed the more reasoned NYTimes June 15th article by Michael Winerip "Holdouts Against Standard Tests are Under Attack in New York" discussing Consortium Schools and Portfolio-based education.

High Stakes Testing is the lazy educator/bureaucrat's guide to evaluating education. Visiting individual schools and do ongoing evaluations of school and student performance appears to be much too costly and time-consuming.

If one's children do not participate in the New York City public school system, it's much easier to rely on numbers than to see the many schools like my own child's portfolio-based School of the Future in District 2, which do not cherrypick students based on test scores and which are doing an excellent job - a factor not necessarily evident in the current system based on numbers rankings, but certainly on the high percentage of this school's high school graduates who go on to college.

This is not to minimize the crises some of New York City's public schools face. But Dr. Mills and the writer of the June 17th Editorial will never know which schools really are in crises and which simply are full of A, B and C+ students working hard and enjoying their time in school.

It is these schools, with significant real-world (not test-world) performances, of which the editorial writer seems so unaware. It is a pity that Dr. Richard Mills - once an outspoken opponent of high stakes testing during his tenure in Vermont is unwilling to devise a system which both acknowledges the performance of many portfolio-based schools and allows them to continue being successful. It is these schools (and not necessarily those in the New York City Chancellor's 200 top testers) which take students from all academic and socio-economic backgrounds and in many cases give them an excellent education that enables them - whether they elect to pursue higher education or not - to become fully functioning, productive members of the adult community.

As a parent of one child in an acclaimed private/independent high school and a daughter at the Public School of the Future, I know the difference between a great education and a merely adequate one. Surprisingly, the attention and education my daughter receives at the public School of the Future far surpasses that of the private institution. Teachers at Future take the time to know and nurture each child and to tailor their programs to each child's learning style - this is particularly important as this school does NOT cherrypick nor limit its student body to those with only the highest test scores or best zip codes. Teachers independently elected to work extra hours to enable the administration to reduce class size to 25 - unheard of in the public system. And the resulting student performance seems to prove that indeed size DOES matter.

The school is fortunate to offer a significant afterschool program which I credit with keeping most of these students active, out of trouble and involved in the school program. It is worth noting that many of these students compete successfully for state and national academic awards and that nearly all go on to a 2 or 4 year college. THIS IS A SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENT FOR A NEW YORK CITY PRIVATE SCHOOL, LET ALONE A PUBLIC SCHOOL.

What I would change is not the school, but the environment in which it must operate:

- Permit this school and others like it to retain their exemptions from high stakes testing and continue their portfolio-based graduation criteria. Seeing the school in operation is believing.

- Continue this school's exemption from Regents tests - level the playing field with the private schools which are exempt. The School of the Future works. It's student's go on to college. What more proof of performance is necessary?

As a non-native New Yorker, I know that no one outside of New York's State Universities either knows or cares about Regents tests. It seems simply another unnecessary expenditure of money that could be better allocated to the classroom or afterschool programs.

Thank you for your time,
Marcia Golden

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To the editor:

I was dismayed to read Brent Staples' claim that "a bill in the State Legislature could strangle reforms by allowing some schools to evade rigorous state tests in favor of subjective evaluations." The school's with Portfolio assessment are the ones that have pioneered reform in the New York City public schools. My two daughters are graduates of NYC public schools. My older daughter graduated from the Bronx High School of Science. She passed all her Regents exams and had excellent grades. Like many of her fellow students, she could study from a regents review book and pass these tests with minimal work. The material was promptly forgotten. Despite many excellent teachers, the rigid mandates of Regents driven classes translated into lots of text and test, limited reading of quality literature and very few required research papers. She entered an excellent college, but was not well prepared to meet the demands of college paper writing.

My younger daughter attended Beacon High School. She never took a regents exam, but was required to write several research papers/projects in all subjects, each and every term. Before graduating, she had to prepare and present a portfolio in each subject area. This entailed doing additional research to revise selected pieces. She had to orally defend each portfolio. This was hard and serious work. By the time she finished, she knew the material well. Needless to say, she was well prepared for college and paper writing.

Portfolio assessment does not "evade" rigor, it promotes it.

Naomi Smith