The Mormon Monk

This is the fourth of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 5 (coming soon). During a week in Louisville, I spent 53 hours reading student essays that were recorded in illegible scrawls requiring intense eyestrain to decipher. During that time, I graded more than 2,000 exams, spending a little less than a minute on each essay. I quickly grew tired of reading about Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, Chris Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, Tina Fey, and a slew of humorists I had never heard of before my arrival in Louisville. The only thing that pulled me through this slog of essays was the occasional gem in the rough, an essay whose unintentional comedy would lead to laughter. Let me share with you the last of these gems which students thought would impress exam readers: The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, w...

This is the third of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 4, and Part 5 (coming soon!). While the grading standards set forth in the official grading rubric for each essay question might seem to be straightforward, you’ll find that most graders disagree strongly as to what makes for an “adequate” essay versus an “inadequate” essay—and that those disagreements are even more stringent when you’re discussing minor variations: What distinguishes an inadequate 3 from an inadequate 4? An adequate 6 from an adequate 7? The sorts of natural disagreements that any two individuals might have over these sorts of questions are complicated by grader demographics. I would estimate that approximately 50% of the 2010 English Language exam graders were high school teachers; another 35% or so were teachers at the community college level, and the remaining 15%...

This is the second of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4 and Part 5 (coming soon). After the prompt, the official grading rubric is the most important document for any grader in assessing the quality of a given exam. Each essay is scored on a scale from 1-9, but graders are encouraged to interpret that range as a series of decisions. The first question every grader is supposed to ask: “Is this an upper-half or lower-half paper?” Lower-half scores include 1-4; upper half papers include scores 5-9. Once the grader has identified the essay as “upper-half” or “lower-half,” they break it into a further subset. Lower-half papers are further divided into two groups. Those that are “Inadequate” have evidence that is “inappropriate, insufficient, or less convincing” or the argument is “inadequately developed.” Inadequate papers receive a sc...

This is the first of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 and Part 5 (coming soon!). Educational Testing Services— ETS—administers two Advanced Placement (AP) English exams, one that assesses students’ ability to write (English Language) and one that assesses student knowledge of famous works of literature (English Literature). On the appointed day in May every year high school students across the country line up to take these exams, hoping that their score, on a 1-5 scale, will allow them to test out of freshman composition in their college of choice; for most students this means that they need to score at least a 3 on the exam. Once students have completed the exam, ETS assembles the exams and transports them to a single location, where graders from across the country will assemble to read the essay portion. This year, that assembly took...

. . . a book like this comes along. Okay--maybe five times. Whatever. The point is that when I brought this book with me on a visit to my sister's house in Massachusetts, my brother-in-law, The Dub , who is himself much more entertaining than must-see TV, went wild. The Dub, who will tell you that he's only read 5 books cover-to-cover in his entire life, was so excited at the prospect of this book that he snatched it from me (after asking politely, as is The Dub's wont) and took it with him on a road trip, willing to pay late fees if necessary and to mail it back to North Carolina so that I could return it to the library from whence I had borrowed it. What book, pray tell? Physics For Future Presidents by Richard A. Muller I was introduced to the title by the wildly entertaining Steph/vens (Levitt and Dubner, who are worth a read themselves) and immediately picked it up; after The Dub eventually returned it, I've been thoroughly well-informed (not that I'm consider...