Daily Magazine

15 March 2014

"How long does the essay need to be?"

"How far does a rabbit run?" I'd respond?

"Huh?"

Well, a rabbit gets out of his hole and runs until he gets where he's going.? That how long your essay should be, and not one word longer."

The emphasis is upon the quality of the paper not the length. And, leading students to misperceive the intent of establishing a minimum length for their essays is the primary criteria upon which their writing is to be assessed is length is fraught with serious misdirection leading to missing the point of the point of learning to be articulate and succinct in expressing one's thoughts in words.

In fact, if we are to limit our perspective of what makes for an excellent education being limited to what will best prepare students for college and career, at least on the career front, being articulate and succinct are among the most valuable skills we can encourage. That is, unless "Bulls**tting and bluffing" are in fact valuable skills in college and career.

Although I have paid much attention to my very mixed feelings about how the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, specifically in the area of literary reading, among the attributes of the Common Core efforts that I admire very much is the attempt to keep the focus of assessment upon the actual skills at the heart of each element of the curricular areas elements. And, when the subject is Informational Reading and Writing, I'm quite supportive because the margin of error for the skills in those areas is less than the existing margin of error for current literary reading assessments. That being said, keeping the focus of "grading" upon the appropriate skills is critical and I do believe at the heart of the best of what the Common Core brings to public education.

An arbitrary requirement for the number of pages in an essay is a false focus. It is essentially equivalent to the impact on a student grade of extra-credit when used as behavior management. It pollutes the data and therefore pollutes the "data-driven" conclusions that are drawn.

Even very common practice of failing students for turning work in late pollutes the data if one is interested in measuring the curricular skill achievement. There is some justification for some penalizing for late work. But, losing 100% of the possible points for a late essay skews the overall measure of whether or not the student can actually write an articulate and succinct essay  attending to mechanics, usage, grammar, and organization.

What we do in the area of managing student learning AND behavior affects our students' perception of what is valued in essay writing or literary reading. And, we ought to wonder about every parameter we put around student performance and whether it is enhancing their focus and our ability to assess their performance.

 ~ www.GoogleLitTrips.com ~

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