These policies and procedures apply to all secondary education teacher candidates including Health Education and Visual Arts Education.   They do not apply to programs that administer portfolio assessment internally such as Elementary Education, Physical Education, Music, and Special Education.  PEC policy indicates that teacher candidates' portfolios should be evaluated twice at Decision Point 3 for secondary education majors—once by content area faculty and once by EdSec 380/EdJhm 385 faculty. 

1. Portfolios will be evaluated the academic semester prior to the preservice teacher's semester of student teaching.
2. rGrade will "flag" and notify 380/385 and content methods faculty each semester with the names of previous or current teacher candidates' portfolios that need to be evaluated.
3. In the event a 380/385 or content methods faculty member is no longer available to evaluate teacher candidates' portfolios, notice will be sent to the program manager and department chairperson.
4. Both evaluators' assessment will be visible in rGrade, and the assessments will not be averaged.
5. An unsatisfactory rating by either evaluator in the Reflective Statements and/or Rationale elements will result in stopping the teacher candidate's progress.

Determining Overall Proficiency on the Portfolio

As previously agreed, an unsatisfactory rating in Reflective Statements or Rationale by either evaluator automatically results in the portfolio failing.    In addition, as previously agreed, we do not want the two evaluators' scores to be averaged.  Yet, it is important for institutional purposes that portfolios receive an overall rating.  Therefore, the following formula is proposed for determining overall ratings for portfolios.

A portfolio will receive an overall Unsatisfactory rating if one or more of the following is true:

• Either reviewer gives an unsatisfactory rating in Reflective Statements or Rationale
• Both reviewers give any single category an unsatisfactory rating
• There are a combined total of 3 or more unsatisfactory ratings, with at least one unsatisfactory from each reviewer

A portfolio will receive an overall Distinguished rating if it receives distinguished ratings in both Reflective Statements and Rationale by both evaluators plus three more distinguished ratings between the two evaluations.

A portfolio will receive an overall Proficient rating if there is no more than one basic grade between evaluators in the areas of Reflective Statements and Rationale plus four more proficient ratings between the two evaluations.

All other portfolios will receive an overall Basic rating.

Unsatisfactory Portfolios

Since rGrade enables comments for each element of the rubric, evaluators who rate an element unsatisfactory should address the weaknesses in the comment section.  A teacher candidate would need to "fix" the weaknesses and the evaluator who initially gave the portfolio an Unsatisfactory rating would re-review the portfolio.  In the case of both evaluators determining unsatisfactory, both evaluators would re-review the portfolio.  It would be up to the teacher candidate to notify faculty when his/her portfolio was ready for to re-evaluation.

Scheduling Issues

• Portfolios will be submitted by the Tuesday of Week 12. 
• Assessments will be visible to teacher candidates by Tuesday of Week 14.
• Teacher candidates with Unsatisfactory portfolios must resubmit portfolios by the last day of classes during the semester.
• Re-evaluation by the faculty member(s) who deemed the portfolio unsatisfactory will be due when final grades are due.