Effective ePortfolios

In his blog 2 cents worth, David Warick comments that he views a state-of-the art ePortfolio system as the next killer app (see http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/?p=1792).

I commented:

I too participated in the Leadership Symposium at NECC. I agree that “what gets measured is what gets taught”; therefore we need to move toward adding ePortfolio in as one way of assessment. In Maryland, this was the first year that High School Assessments (HSA) were required for graduation. Seniors needed to pass the HSA Algebra, Government, Biology, and English to graduate. As the deadline approached, there was an issue about students who would not graduate who had met all the other graduation requirements. Maryland decided to offer projects and portfolio assessment of these projects as an alternative to passing the tests. Many students worked hard and teachers worked hard with them to satisfy the requirements. Reports from this year’s seniors to under classman are that you should pass the test because it is alot less work than passing the project portfolio assessments. May question is why weren’t these students taught this way in the first place?

Now I'd like to add:
Finland (top ranked in educational performance) emphasizes project-based learning (along with performance assessment). What do we need to do in the US (besides reducing our dependence on high-stakes testing) to make project-based learning and performance assessment more widely adopted here?