In this article, I consider how subjectivities are composed and assessed within the boundaries of a career-focused portfolio program. First, by examining how portfolio composition is taught in senior English courses, I identify the qualities of the subject position students are called to occupy. Next, I present discourse analyses of portfolio materials composed by two students of different class backgrounds. More specifically, I explore how these students draw upon and adapt different resources to promote themselves as different kinds of subjects-in-worlds. As these disparate performances are assessed according to their coherence with certain class values, I argue, the program rates certain lives more favorably than others.

Observes how nine members of the Pine View High School English Department interpreted and implemented Kentucky’s state requirement for portfolio assessment of secondary school students. Suggests that the faculty saw the assessment as a test of their competence and felt great pressure to produce good portfolios but little incentive to explore ways portfolios might be used in the classroom.

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