"Assessing and Evaluating Students" and "Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook"

How to determine students' grades is, clearly, one of the most controversial things a teacher has to consider. Of course, whatever the process is, and no matter how clear, somebody will be unhappy about it, and while a teacher must be self-reflective about these things, I strongly stand against the tendency for the "squeaky wheel to get the oil." I've had teachers who've done this, who've made exceptions for students without reason other than that the student came and talked to them, and these teachers are less respected by the rest of the students, who have agreed all year long to play the game by the announced rules.
Because I so strongly hold this value, I am leery about any policies that seem to go in this wishy-washy direction. As a high-school student, I preferred the teachers who did just take he mean of the assessed grades. It spared me from having to sit through a long, boring explanation delivered from the teacher to the class about how every little thing was going to be weighed and graded, when I knew from the start that I was going to just do the stupid homework, with whatever effort I felt it merited at the time, and as long as I did that, I would get a tolerable grade.
But my mentor teacher explained to me recently something similar to what was suggested in the "Grading and Reporting" article, that if a student is on the cusp of failing or passing, and you can see a lot of low grades at the beginning of the period and higher more recent grades, then you should make an exception and at least give a passing grade. The article seems to go further, suggesting that it's fairest to give a student a very high grade if they've recently done very well. But this is too much, in my opinion. High school students are not dumb. Maybe, comparatively, I was dumb, when it came to not caring whether my grade was an A or a B, so that I paid so little attention to the process and I was pushed by an inner-motivation to do work fairly well, whatever work I was given to do. But I know my past fellow-students too well. It would not take long for any student to realize that he or she could extend the summer carelessness throughout the beginning of the following year, knowing that as long as most of the final grades were good, the grade wouldn't suffer badly. A teacher could see this happening, but it's unlikely that any teacher would be able to prove it was happening, so that a teacher who tried to not reward intentional early-year laziness would be left vulnerable to the accusation of bias.
There may also be unique situations where some kind of trauma has affected a student's grade, but there is potential for a slippery slope, so a teacher must be vigilant to not allow many of these, unless he or she is going to redesign how the entire class is assessed.

In the "assessing and evaluating" handout, one thing stood out starkly to me. It gave me a shudder of bad memories. It was the word "portfolio." 
I understand that there needs to be effective summative assessment. However, I also remember that the main reason why I didn't stress out on final tests as a student, generally, was because I attacked them with the exact same philosophy that I attacked every formative assessment up to that point. It was different with a portfolio, though. To be asked to compile something in a fashion that was entirely new seemed a daunting task. To be asked to hold on to otherwise meaningless (I felt) past assignments was enough of a struggle already, but then to choose out of them work examples that were (presumably) going to follow me like a cursed totem for years to come filled me with dread.
Of course, in reality, the portfolio didn't mean anything after graduation, and the past assignments truly were meaningless, because I knew all along that the real product of education was in my head and not on paper, and I believed that what was on paper was never a fair representation of what was accomplished in my head. 
So in all that anecdotal evidence, what I've determined is that my students shouldn't ever be given an important summative assessment without practicing a mini-version of it, at least twice, with lower stakes.