Teaching Comparative

THE Reading

A week from now, 500-600 of our colleagues (and some of you) will be in Ft. Collins, CO busily reading the words written by our students last May.

If you haven't been a reader, I highly recommend the experience. Nothing helped me be a better AP teacher. And I'm sure the benefits spilled over into my other classes as well.

Witnessing and participating in the process of grading hundreds of thousands of "Free Responses," also reaffirmed my confidence in the validity of the scores our students earn.

Readers are organized by question and by table. A table is usually 6 readers and a table leader. My table leader in 2003 was Bill Babcock (The Bolles School, Jacksonville, FL). The other readers at our short-handed table were Rebecca Small (Herndon HS, Virginia), Tukumbi Lumumba-Kasongo (Wells College, Aurora, NY), Eduardo Mugalhaes (Simpson College, Indianola, IA), Matt Krain (The College of Wooster, Ohio), and me.

Much of the first day of the reading is spent learning how to apply the rubric. (Rubrics are being polished this week in Ft. Collins by question leaders and table leaders.) Readers "grade" and discuss responses that were graded by the leaders. Then they pass responses around the table, everyone "grades" them, and people discusses how and why the rubric was applied. When the group is in agreement about how to apply the rubric (getting to that agreement is a special duty of table leaders, especially in U.S. where many tables read responses to the same question), readers begin reading and grading.

But, they still often consult their table mates and their table leaders about the perplexing things students sometimes write. And, they exchange random responses with other readers to ensure they are still applying the rubric in the agreed-upon manner. And all week long, table leaders and question leaders are reading already graded random responses to ensure consistency. In the back room, ETS statisticians are compiling average scores and average scores per question and average scores per table and average scores per reader, watching for anomalies.

The word is that Government and Politics readers will be gathering in Florida next year. Get your application in if you can take 8 days in June to support your colleagues and your students.

posted by Ken Wedding @ 9:30 AM