The principal goals of the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport's large-scale writing assessment are to determine if a writing program actually helps students to write better and, if so, whether that growth can be measured during the college years. Portfolio assessment has become an attractive alternative to single-test essay at SUNY Brockport. If such an assessment technique seems premature at the placement level, once students are on campus portfolios make sense as an outcomes measure. A commonplace phenomenon confounds the writing program at Brockport: well over 1,000 transfer students (with markedly uneven writing skills) enter every year. A second tier of required writing was established at the "rising-junior" (second semester sophomore and incoming transfer students). In the absence of resources to support multiple measures of writing, alternating the single-test essay and portfolio offers the best of both worlds. (RS)