An education in grading

SIKESTON, Mo. -- Seated at rows of computers, a group of teachers quietly graded some of the answers given by Missouri seventh-graders on the state's communication arts exam.

The task was a lesson in scoring parts of the standardized Missouri Assessment Program test under the supervision of grading experts.

"Our main objective for having teachers do this is professional development," said Bill Gerling, assistant director of assessment for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "We want teachers to understand how they are scored."

Twenty-three teachers, many of them from schools in Southeast Missouri, attended the MAP scoring workshop at the Sikeston Career and Technical Center. The workshop began Monday and ended Thursday. The teachers at the workshop were among more than 500 classroom teachers from public schools across Missouri who participated in such sessions this month to help score math and communication arts exams taken by about 500,000 students in the spring semester. The standardized tests are used to gauge academic progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Twelve school districts, including Sikeston, hosted the scoring workshops put on by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education this month in collaboration with the test publisher, CTB/McGraw-Hill. This was the seventh year DESE has held MAP scoring workshops.

While Missouri's teachers help score a portion of the tests, the bulk of the scoring is done by the test publisher at its facilities in California and Indiana.

The answers to multiple-choice questions are machine scored, DESE officials said. Most of the essays and other answers that students write out are scored by CTB staff members who daily tackle such tasks.

Teachers at the workshops are trained to score some of the written answers on portions of thousands of tests. But that's still a relatively low percentage of the exams graded, Gerling said.

Missouri is unique in the involvement of its teachers in grading some of the essays and other answers written out by students, said the CTB's Matt Howard, who helped supervise the workshop in Sikeston.

That workshop focused solely on grading the communication arts tests taken by seventh-graders.

Howard said the teachers have access only to the parts of each exam that they are trained to grade. They don't have access to the names of the students whose tests they are grading. The grading is recorded electronically through a secure Internet connection to school computer labs at the 12 host schools.

The first two days of each workshop are spent training the teachers on how to score the answers to specific test questions. The goal, Gerling said, is to make sure that the teachers grade the answers the same way as CTB staff members do. The teachers have to accurately score sample questions before they are allowed to do any actual grading.

"Everybody has to be consistent," Gerling said. "It may not be rocket science, but it is not the easiest thing in the world, either."

On Thursday, teachers at the Sikeston workshop said it took longer to grade written answers of students who had poor handwriting. But some teachers said they liked grading the answers on computer because they could magnify the written words to better read them.

Emily Schumer of Cape Girardeau teaches seventh-grade science at the Sikeston Middle School. In past years, she scored math and science MAP tests. This week, she scored communication arts tests.

Schumer said the workshops educate teachers on some of the mistakes that students make on the standardized tests. "We have a better idea of what students are weak in and what points to stress," she said.

Although she's a science teacher, Schumer said, communication arts is emphasized in all subject areas.

Charles Buss of Cape Girardeau, who teaches social studies and English to junior high school students in the Bell City School District, said the teachers at the workshop share ideas on how to improve their teaching and better prepare students to take the MAP tests. "We get a lot of team-building ideas," said Buss.

Teachers apply for the project and their applications must be approved by their school principals. The teachers are required to have at least two years of teaching experience in the subject area they score, DESE officials said.

The state pays each participating teacher a stipend of $100 a day. Graduate credit is also available.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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