Journal of Writing Assessment

An examination of the status and uses of writing portfolios in university writing programs at the close of the 20th century, Assessing the Portfolio was written out of the firsthand experiences of two writing program administrators (WPAs) who worked together in the mid-1980s at the University of Michigan just at the time that Belanoff and Elbow (1986) published their germinal piece on the demise of timed writing tests and the birth of university writing portfolios as exit measures at Stony Brook, ushering in a period of profound interest and attention to portfolios in the writing classroom. Pat Belanoff and Marcia Dickson's 1991 anthology Portfolios: Process and Product and Kathleen Blake Yancey's (1992) Portfolios in the Writing Classroom began a half decade or so of conferences and publications that has helped establish the portfolio as a mainstay in the writing classroom and as a viable option for large-scale assessment as well.