How to score a standardized essay [DOCUMENTS]

This week's cover on the secret life of standardized test scorers.

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As the story mentions, the essay companies use a rubric to judge how many points to give a written essay. Familiarizing themselves with the rubric through anchor papers, scorers are able to whip through essays and assign them a point value in a matter of seconds.

Here's a peek at an old essay used here in Minnesota and how it was scored.

The examples shown below are from a reading test administered to third-graders. The question was developed with Minnesota's testing contractor, Pearson. Minnesota has since removed human-scored items from its reading test, but they are still common on standardized tests all over the country--common enough that thousands of temporary workers are hired to score them each year.

In this particular item, students read a short story and then answered a question about what happened. The scores ranged from 0 to 3, and the rubric's justification is at the bottom of each response.

A "3" or excellent response.

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A "2" response.

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