AP Scoring Guide

A couple of weeks ago, I had students in both my AP and 10th grade classes write essays based on one of last year's AP Lit Exam essay prompts. This week, I'm asking them to use the official AP scoring guide to score them.

I have to admit some heebies and jeebies over doing stuff like this. It feels like I'm spending class time teaching kids to game the test system rather than investing that time into teaching them how to approach a text honestly and incisively. However, because the AP scoring guide looks for legitimate intellectualism, we can use it (in a carefully qualified way) to look for legitimate intellectualism in our own work and in the work of others.

So without further ado, the guide:

The score reflects the quality of the essay as a whole — its content, style, and mechanics. Students are rewarded for what they do well. The score for an exceptionally well-written essay may be raised by 1 point above the otherwise appropriate score. In no case may a poorly written essay be scored higher than a 3.

9–8 These essays identify an “illuminating” episode or moment in a novel or play and persuasively analyze how the moment functions as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Using apt and specific textual support, these essays effectively identify an episode or moment and explore its meaning. Although these essays may not be error-free, they exhibit the student’s ability to discuss a literary work with insight and understanding, while demonstrating clarity, precision, coherence, and — in the case of an essay scored a 9 — particular persuasiveness and/or stylistic flair.


7–6 These essays identify an “illuminating” episode or moment in a novel or play and offer a reasonable analysis of how such a moment functions as a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. These essays offer insight and understanding, but the analysis is less thorough, less perceptive, and/or less specific in supporting detail than that of the 9–8 essays. References to the text may not be as apt or as persuasive. Essays scored a 7 present better developed analysis and more consistent command of elements of effective composition than do essays scored a 6.


5 These essays respond to the assigned task with a plausible reading, but they tend to be superficial in analysis. They may rely upon plot summary that contains some analysis, implicit or explicit. Although these responses attempt to discuss an episode or moment in a novel or play and how it functions as a window that opens onto the meaning of the work, they may demonstrate a simplistic understanding. They demonstrate adequate control of language, but they may be marred by surface errors. These essays are not as well conceived, organized, or developed as 7–6 essays.


4–3 These lower-half essays fail to offer an adequate understanding of the work. They may fail to identify an “illuminating” moment or they may fail adequately to explore its meaning. They may rely on plot summary alone; their assertions may be unsupported or irrelevant. The writing may demonstrate a lack of control over the conventions of composition: inadequate development of ideas, an accumulation of errors, or an argument that is unclear, inconsistent, or repetitive. Essays scored a 3 may contain significant misreading and/or demonstrate inept writing.


2–1 Although these essays make some attempt to respond to the prompt, they compound the weaknesses of the responses in the 4–3 range. Often, they are unacceptably brief or incoherent in presenting their ideas. They are poorly written and contain distracting errors in grammar and mechanics. Remarks may be presented with little clarity, organization, or supporting evidence. Essays scored a 1 contain little coherent discussion of the text.

0 These essays do no more than make a reference to the task.

— These essays are either left blank or are completely off topic.

Dilatory Time

Ron Ritchhart articulates a list of a dozen criteria for "classroom thoughtfulness" in his book Intellectual Character. While I won't reproduce it in full here, since it appears to be traditionally copyrighted and licensed, there were a couple that stood out to be as good principles for teacher self-reflection, which is a big push of mine this year.

There are some high-falutin' ones, but I think it would be interesting to focus on one of the most basic building blocks of class discussion and behavior: "In this class, students were given an appropriate amount of time to think, that is, to prepare responses to questions."

I remember, as a young teacher, having an incredibly hard time with this. I'd come to class with a beloved copy of the text crammed with marginalia, and I'd throw a humdinger of a question out to my students. The weight of my hand would hold the book open at the key page, my ring finger half-obscuring a scratched out comment along the lines of "is this a reference back to the initial images of glass and water?" or maybe a simple exclamation like "whaa?" I'd be buzzing with the kind of knowledge you only have if you really love a text.

And my kids would like the text too, partly because it was great and partly because I so clearly loved it. And most of them had read, too. And all of them were thinking about my question. And none of them would volunteer an answer. After about ten seconds' silence, I'd ask another question, and then another, with a kind of quiet desperation. Then I'd ask an easier, less interesting question. I'd slide in that direction until I was asking something easy enough for a kid to confidently supply a simple answer, and on the discussion would limp. I'd leave the class a bit disappointed in myself. I didn't know then, and I barely know now, that the missing catalyst was time. We cannot love enough to overcome the simple march of time.

I was in year four of a torrid love affair with the text. My students were just hearing its first pickup line. They needed time to flirt a bit if they were going to get something out of the relationship.

Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. I didn't realize that so many of my problems boiled down to a procedural issue. I had everything I needed already, but I wasn't giving it time. My kids needed not just a passionate, honest question but also a chance to reflect on it. They needed ten minutes to poke through the text for a good quotation and to write about it. Then, their thoughts had a bit of structure and depth, and the kids had a bit of confidence about sharing it.

This technique is so common and obvious that I hesitate to even call it a technique, and most English teachers reading this will have not just figured out the solution before I got to it, but they probably saw the problem coming in paragraph three. But I still think it's worth saying, and I think it's a principle that applies to much harder issues of teaching and learning.

Are your students being given an appropriate amount of time to think? And what are you doing to help them engage in their heads, through their pens, and on their keyboards? Have you given them the ingredients and the time they need to mix them?

Using the AP for Good, not Evil

Is it good or evil to give my AP kids this question (from the 2011 Lit AP) as a blog assignment for today? It's designed for a 40 minute handwritten essay response, so that makes it sort of perfect for a full class blog post.

In The Writing of Fiction (1925), novelist Edith Wharton states the following.

At every stage in the progress of his tale the novelist must rely on what may be called the illuminating incident to reveal and emphasize the inner meaning of each situation. Illuminating incidents are the magic casements of fiction, its vistas on infinity.

Choose a novel or play that you have studied and write a well-organized essay in which you describe an “illuminating” episode or moment and explain how it functions as a “casement,” a window that opens onto the meaning of the work as a whole. Avoid mere plot summary.

In this case, instead of any novel or play, they'll need to answer this question by examining The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, our current text. Personally, I can't tell if I find this question arbitrarily arcane or potentially fascinating—or a little of both, I suppose.

The real question is whether I'm evil enough to ask my 10th graders to grapple with this question as they write about The Things They Carried. At first glance, it might seem a bit intense, but as I reflect on the question and cast my memory over The Things They Carried—easier to cast it now, having read the book six or seven times—I realize that it might be quite helpful to choose single illuminating moments of that text too.

Is it unfair to give 10th graders questions from the AP? No. Is it unfair to grade a 40 minute response to an AP question like they're AP students? Yes, so I won't do that. Will they find it difficult at first to understand the casement metaphor? Yes, and so will the AP kids. But we want them to struggle with difficult, nebulous problems and realize that defining the terms of a problem and struggling through it are part of learning. Parsing things for kids is like cutting up their food. At a certain age, you need them not to choke on it, so you do the cutting, but at some point, you've got to let them grab the knife and give it a whack. You watch them carefully to make sure nothing goes tragically wrong, but you let them do it.

Here's a prediction: at first, they'll ask me what a casement is, not because they're foolish but rather because they're wise enough to know that they need to know the definition in order to parse the question. Inexperience, however, will lead some of them to ask me instead of to read the question critically, so they won't realize that the question defines "casement" both literally as a window and metaphorically as an opening "onto the meaning of the work as a whole."

So today I'll be playing the swim coach who knows his kids can tread water but is asking them to do it in the deep end...as they give their knives a whack in order to find the window.

Update:

The reactions from the 10th graders ranged from quiet diligence to open terror. It was really hard for some kids to trust their own judgment and reading of the question. Will all of them address the question as the AP writers intended? No, but that's not the point. The point is that they do it on their own and that I grade them on what I value here: the attempt to work on their own and confront the text honestly.

Still, I do feel a bit like the swim coach who's watching a kid panic and splutter. Fortunately, no matter how much the kids freak out, the worst case scenario here is a terrible essay, which isn't fatal.