In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court determined that the state's public school system was unconstitutional and called for the General Assembly to "recreate and re-establish a new system of common schools." A new system of accountability in language arts departments required portfolio assessment that was both objective and strictly consistent with procedures and regulations prescribed by the legislature. An ethnographic study examined this assessment process and explored the ways in which one high school English department, consisting of nine women, found themselves struggling with competing loyalties or ethical commitments. Teachers were not to grade any portfolios containing writing familiar to them, i.e., writing written for them in one of their classes. They were responsible for scoring 23 anonymous portfolios Difficulties began when a third reading was required to resolve a dispute between the first and second ratings. The size of the school made it almost unavoidable that the third reader would have to evaluate a portfolio put together by a former student. Problems in scoring portfolios arose when teachers were required to give low scores to students they knew to be proficient writers and when teachers encountered a portfolio they believed had not been completed by a student. The primary weakness of the Kentucky portfolio assessment system may be that it encourages teachers to practice a dangerous form of self-deception: they are asked to pretend that they can become dispassionate readers, able to evaluate themselves and their students objectively. (Contains 11 references; the Kentucky Writing Assessment holistic scoring guide is appended.) (TB)