New Rubric: Common Core Explanatory / Informative Writing (9-10) rubric

The first of many rubrics distilled from the Common Core State Standards.

Update 9/21/12:
In the six months since this post was originally published, my view of how to integrate with Common Core has evolved a considerable amount. This post is now old news. I've built a free, publicly-accessible tool to help teachers create their own customized Common Core-aligned rubrics. It's going to make life SO much easier for all of us!

Read about this new approach or jump straight to the EssayTagger Common Core Rubric Creation Tool

Check it out and let me know what you think!


Original Post:
The Common Core State Standards. Oof.

You've heard all the talk. You suspect they might get in your way and make your life a living hell. Just thinking about them makes you want to curl up on the couch in the fetal position and take a nap (my default reaction to moderately stressful things).

I'm not here to sell you on its merits or argue that there is a lack thereof. I'm here to make your life a little bit easier when you find yourself held accountable to the Common Core standards when teaching writing.

New Rubric: "They Say, I Say"

One of our first demo rubrics is now available for anyone to use in their own EssayTagger assignments!

Gerald Graff was one of my professors at the University of Illinois at Chicago during my M.Ed. program. And, I'll be honest, I was very wary of "They Say, I Say" when he first explained the concept of the book to my class. But TSIS quickly won me over. And the skyrocketing sales that he and his wife/co-writer have enjoyed certainly show that others appreciate its value as well.

But there was one thing I noticed -- the book does not address assessment. I love the guidance it offers for teaching composition and the structure it gives to developing writers, but I felt like there was a missing final chapter on how to evaluate the resulting TSIS-style essays.

So I began developing a TSIS-style rubric that would work within the EssayTagger system. I met with Prof. Graff to show him an early draft and his eyes lit up with enthusiasm.

Now that I've completed EssayTagger's rubric sharing and import features, I can post the rubric for anyone to use:

EssayTagger "They Say, I Say" rubric:

http://www.essaytagger.com/rubric?code=AA-TSIS

This rubric is listed as a "work-in-progress" because, well, it is. But it's a pretty dang good start. And keep in mind that any rubric shared on EssayTagger is meant to be a starting point. Teachers should alter and customize these rubrics however they see fit.

Let me know what you think!

New Rubric: Four-Strand/Four-Level

From what I'm told, the Four-Strand/Four-Level rubric is fairly common in Washington schools. I've adapted it for use in EssayTagger (you can import it straight into your own assignments!) but you'll still want to customize it to suit your needs.

EssayTagger version of the Four-Strand/Four-Level rubric:

http://www.essaytagger.com/rubric?code=CW-MEHZ

And as I've said previously, because rubrics are so macroscopic, they inevitably undergo some changes when they are adapted for the much more fine-grained world of EssayTagger.

Changing how we think about rubrics

Traditional rubrics are too general and macroscopic to help students. The future is specificity. And it's here.

Sharing rubrics is a simple, but important, way for teachers to collaborate.

Unfortunately, traditional rubrics -- by their nature -- can only address general, overall trends in a paper: "Some evidence was insufficient." That's fine for a quick, high-level diagnostic, but it's not very helpful for the student.

My goal when I'm grading papers is to coach the students so they can learn from their mistakes and do better next time. Traditional rubrics are good for setting expectations before the attempt, but once the essays are graded, they're really just an assessment tool. They're not a learning tool.

In order to improve, students need more fine-grained feedback: Which specific piece of evidence was weak? Why wasn't it compelling?

Traditional rubrics simply can't address these questions (nor, to be fair, were they meant to). Traditional rubrics are macroscopic. But students need the microscopic.

Latest Update: Rubric sharing and rubric import!

Instructions for using our new rubric sharing and rubric import features!

You can -- and should -- share your EssayTagger rubrics with your colleagues and/or the whole world wide web!


Sharing a rubric
After you log in you'll notice the new top nav menu bar:

Here's a bigger view so you can read the options:

Click on "my rubrics" and you'll see the new My Rubrics page:

This page will list all of your rubrics. Pick a rubric you'd like to share and click on the "view / share" link. That will take you to the Sharing Info page for that rubric:

Accountability and Incentives: A Cautionary Tale, pt1

Introduction

I understand the rationale behind the push for ever-increasing teacher accountability -- it's natural to want to insure that your kids are getting the quality education they deserve. Teachers can't just sit back and say, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." Those days are over. Fair enough.

But we teachers need the rest of the country to understand that when we push back against how teacher accountability is being implemented, we are not just scurrying around trying to hide our incompetence or protect our "cushy" jobs.

We can handle the scrutiny. Most of us would be eager to let our students' successes serve as evidence of our effectiveness as educators. I don't think we fear accountability -- if that accountability is implemented properly, if success is defined properly.

It's not about rigging the game in our favor, lowering the bar, or any of that nonsense; it's about making sure that we're judged for the things that really matter, the things that we teachers do that actually improve students' lives.

The American public needs to realize that not all forms of teacher accountability are created equal. Worse, the most popular methods can be misleading or downright detrimental. Even "no-brainer" approaches like rewarding "effective" teachers with bonuses have already ended in failure. Just because greed-maximizing incentives (sort of) work for capitalism doesn't mean they work for education.

However, hearing these arguments and really feeling them are two different things. And somehow teachers have been turned into the enemy -- or at least that's how it feels to us -- to the point where no one seems much interested in listening to the people who have the most expertise on the subject.

But I think the power of satire and absurdity has a chance to get the message across. So, in that vein, I offer you:

Latest Updates: Going global + enhanced security for student info

We are now global! 
Everyone on the planet can now grade essays faster and more efficiently!

Users from anywhere in the world can register on the site and use the free trial to grade a class set of essays (full details on the registration page).


Enhanced security for student information
Part of our to-do list for going global was to make sure that we were doing everything in our power to secure and protect students' personal information. Here are the steps we've taken:

Students' personal information is encrypted in our database using industry-standard best practices to guide our selection of encryption algorithms and encryption strength. If a hacker were to gain access to our records, s/he would only see the encrypted values:

firstName	lastName	email
BsBzpBQkQIN9s6RwV7fr58G2eY8qn2a6	yNd9sZ056n5xS14Qe5uZd3hefgY3s59i	vA8ezh8Vlm3W9WscfkFGQw4C

Each piece of information is individually encrypted in such a way that "cracking the code" for one value does not make it any easier to decrypt the other values.

In fact, EssayTagger's own internal view of the database makes students' information appear just as garbled to us as it would be to an outside hacker.

We have taken these precautions even though it is highly unlikely that our database would be compromised. We are running on Google's computing infrastructure and therefore Google's efforts to safeguard their own computers are our first line of defense. Their computing infrastructure is among the most robust and powerful in the world and any improvement they make to the security of their system automatically protects EssayTagger.com under the same umbrella.

We will never contact a student unless it is an assignment-related notification (e.g. to tell them that their graded essay is available for their review) or if there is a technical issue that requires action on the student's part in order to be resolved.

Note: Instructors can decide whether or not they want the system to collect and store student email addresses. This will allow teachers to remain in compliance if there are any local or national restrictions regarding student contact info.

We will not sell or share students' personal information with any third parties or use students' information for marketing or any purposes outside of what is required to facilitate student-teacher interaction in our system.

Students are not added to any mailing lists.