Faculty FAQs about Grading Persuasive Writing

Why does the entire faculty participate in grading of the school wide writing prompts?

Writing is a cross-curriculum endeavor and is a school wide improvement goal across the curriculum.  The writing prompt is mandated by the central office as a method to improve school wide writing, not just writing in English classes.  Students also benefit from having a diversity of readers.

What is holistic scoring?

Holistic scoring goes beyond mechanical correctness to focus on the overall effect of the writing. It measures the effectiveness of the communication. Readers evaluate the student's essay as a whole using the criteria of the rubric and anchor papers. Readers are not to focus on any one aspect of the writing but to look at the entire essay.

What is a prompt?

A prompt is a short piece of text that defines the topic for the students' writing. Prompts have two basic components: the writing situation and the directions for writing.  The prompts used in the WCS assessment were created by teachers and administrators within the Williamson County School system.

Where did we get the rubric used to score the writing assessment?

The TCAP Writing Assessment rubric is very similar to the rubric used by ETS (Educational Testing Services). An advisory committee, made up of Tennessee teachers and administrators, reviewed the original rubric and made revisions. One revision changed the labels associated with each score point (6-Outstanding, 5-Strong, 4-Competent, 3-Limited, 2-Flawed, and 1-Deficient).

What are the requirements of the rough draft essay?

The writing assessment is demand writing completed within a designated time period (35 minutes for fifth and eighth grade and 25 minutes for eleventh grade). The student writes a rough draft essay because time constraints do not allow time for revision. Students are expected to respond to the prompt in an organized, developed essay with standard use of language, but the response is not expected to be a final, polished essay. Readers score the essays as rough drafts using the anchor papers and rubrics.

How do readers maintain objectivity in the scoring process?

The readers should try to avoid reader bias characteristics such as handwriting, neatness, reaction to the content, and ingrained assessment standards.

What are anchor papers?

They are papers chosen to typify the characteristics of a particular score point on the scoring rubric. The four anchor papers for each score point illustrate both the limits and diversity within each score level. Anchor papers may be found on the Tennessee website: http://www.state.tn.us/education/tswriting.htm

How does style fit into the grading system.

Since no two papers are alike, it is important to represent the range within each score point.  The anchor papers provide at least four different papers of varied style to provide examples.

Who scores the papers?

Two qualified readers score each paper independently. If scores are adjacent, the paper receives the higher of the two scores. If there is a split between the two readers, the paper is read and scored by the team leader.