Students respond to a series of fourteen questions that are organized into four exercises. Students usually reason out their solutions as part of their answers. Usually students can answer these questions in just a few minutes, and in that way they differ from some of the performance activities described below. Although performances can involve demonstrations or presentations, most typically they involve students explaining how they would answer the question or solve a problem by writing a few sentences or paragraphs, drawing and explaining a diagram, or performing an experiment. Such tasks may take from 15 minutes to an hour or more and may involve some work with a group of students who think through the answers and later provide their own individually written answers.
Students generate problems, consider options, propose solutions, and demonstrate their solutions.
Students often work in groups, at least for some of the project, to analyze options and to consider ways to present their thinking and conclusions. There are almost as many approaches to compiling and evaluating portfolios as there are proponents of this form of assessment. Half the teachers surveyed by RAND reported an increase in the time students spent working in pairs or small groups. Almost three-fourths of the principals interviewed said the program produced positive changes in instruction at their schools. According to Dan Koretz and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation, one of the reasons that Vermont's portfolio assessment program has succeeded in changing instruction is the state's enormous investment in professional development for teachers.