Evaluate 1.1.3 – The Summative Assessment Quest

I teach AP Literature, so most of the time, I use essays and projects as a summative assessment. By using essays and projects, I'm able to not only see what students know but the extend to which they know it. It also allows students to exhibit their creativity and exhibit their own ideas. For that reason, the rubric needs to be reliable. 

The rubric I use allows me to assess different products using the same rigorous criteria. 

Reliability: 

This rubric has proven reliable as I have used it now for several years. The rubric is based on the College Board grading criteria. I am also able to use student samples released by the College Board to ensure reliability as I score the different essays. I also use the students to ensure reliability. I often have them score their own papers using the 9 Point rubric. Often, the scores match. 

Validity:

The prompt or question has to be valid. For that reason, I use College Board released essay prompts to model my essay prompts. However, I have written many invalid questions because the question caused issues for students. For example, one question I asked invited, almost required, intentional fallacy in the student's arguments. Since almost all students made that mistake, I changed the prompt for the next year. 

Security: 

The issue with essays of course is Plagiarism. I use several things to handle this issue. First, prevention. I talk to students about this, place my policy on the syllabus, and give examples of what is and is not plagiarism. I also use past student writing samples to compare samples if I feel students have committed plagiarism. If I have evidence that students have committed plagiarism, I use the internet to search common phrases (at this time, I don't have TurnItIn), and if I find plagiarism, I use our departmental protocol.