1.
Many people think that students are not learning enough in school. They want to shorten
most school vacations and make students spend more of the year in school. Other people
think that lengthening the school year and shortening vacations is a bad idea because
students use their vacations to learn important things outside of school.
What is your opinion?
Write a letter to your school board either in favor of or against lengthening the school year.
Give specific reasons to support your opinion that will convince the school board to agree
with you.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Scoring Guide
Score & Description
Excellent
Takes a clear position and develops it consistently with well-chosen reasons and/or
examples across the response.
Is well organized with strong transitions.
Sustains variety in sentence structure and exhibits good word choice
Errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation are few and do not interfere with
understanding.
Skillful
Takes a clear position and develops it with reasons and/or examples in parts of the
response.
Is clearly organized, but may lack some transitions and/or have occasional lapses in
continuity.
Exhibits some variety in sentence structure and some good word choices.
Errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation do not interfere with understanding
Sufficient
Takes a clear position and supports it with some reasons and/or examples.
Is organized with ideas that are generally related, but there are few or no transitions.
Exhibits control over sentence boundaries and sentence structure, but sentences and
word choice may be simple and unvaried.
Errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation do not interfere with understanding.
Uneven
(may be characterized by one or more of the following:)
Takes a position and offers support, but may be unclear, repetitive, list-like, or
undeveloped.
Is unevenly organized; the response may be disjointed.
Exhibits uneven control over sentence boundaries and sentence structure; may have
some inaccurate word choices.
Errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation sometimes interfere with understanding.
Insufficient
(may be characterized by one or more of the following:)
Takes a position, but may be very unclear, very undeveloped, or very repetitive.
Is very disorganized; thoughts are tenuously connected OR the response is too brief to
detect organization.
Minimal control over sentence boundaries and sentence structure; word choice may
often be inaccurate.
Errors in grammar or usage (such as missing words or incorrect word use or word
order), spelling, and punctuation interfere with understanding in much of the response.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Unsatisfactory
(may be characterized by one or more of the following:)
Attempts to take a position (addresses topic) but response is incoherent OR takes a
position but provides no support; may only paraphrase the prompt.
Has no apparent organization OR consists of a single statement.
Minimal or no control over sentence boundaries and sentence structure; word choice
may be inaccurate in much or all of the response.
A multiplicity of errors in grammar or usage (such as missing words or incorrect word
use or word order), spelling, and punctuation severely impedes understanding across
the response.
1
Excellent - Student Response (Please see the following page)
Many people think that students are not learning enough in school. They want to shorten
most school vacations and make students spend more of the year in school. Other people
think that lengthening the school year and shortening vacations is a bad idea because
students use their vacations to learn important things outside of school.
What is your opinion?
Write a letter to your school board either in favor of or against lengthening the school year.
Give specific reasons to support your opinion that will convince the school board to agree
with you.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Scorer Comments:
This student sustains an argument around the idea that lengthening the school year will
subject students to additional stress and will result in their losing some opportunities: "You
learn social skills at school but you can learn them just as easily while on vacation. If you go
to another country for vacation you learn to accept and respect other cultures." The student
provides a clear, connected series of reasons to argue persuasively against lengthening the
school year. While there are occasional spelling errors, overall the student is adept in
varying sentence length and structure, providing evidence to back up his or her point of
view. This response was rated "Excellent."
1
Excellent - Student Response (Please see the following page)
NAEP released item, 8th grade
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Scorer Comments:
This "Excellent" response is articulate and persuasive about the positive value of time spent
away from school. Sentences such as "Can a teacher teach a child values? No. Can a
teacher even guess at what a child really thinks? Of course not," not only demonstrate the
writer's use of varied syntax, but effectively express his or her idea that "values" and "really"
thinking are as important as traditional academic subjects. The sophisticated analysis
evident in lines such as "School is a place where children are prepared to survive in the
world their parents created. Home is where children find out what kind of life is the right one
for them" show this writer's ability to get to the heart of a topic and offer a thoughtful, cogent
response.
1
Skillful - Student Response (Please see the following page)
Many people think that students are not learning enough in school. They want to shorten
most school vacations and make students spend more of the year in school. Other people
think that lengthening the school year and shortening vacations is a bad idea because
students use their vacations to learn important things outside of school.
What is your opinion?
Write a letter to your school board either in favor of or against lengthening the school year.
Give specific reasons to support your opinion that will convince the school board to agree
with you.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Scorer Comments:
In this "Skillful" response, the student provides numerous reasons to illustrate the point that
lengthening the school year will not help students learn more because "every student has
ample opportunity to learn, some just don't want to learn." The student elaborates on his or
her reasons, noting not just that vacations can be educational but what he or she learns:
"When my family and I go into the mountains in national forests we learn about animals and
visit museums." Though the last part of the essay is not as well-structured, the student
continues to provide relevant reasons why the school year should not be lengthened. In this
response, the student does not use the varied and complex sentence structure seen in the
"Excellent" responses.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
1
Skillful - Student Response
Scorer Comments:
This "Skillful" response develops a clear position for lengthening the school year. This
response shows sound development and (with minor exceptions) control over grammar and
syntax. The logic and syntactic variety of this response, however, are not as good as in the
"Excellent" responses. The writer explains what he or she might accomplish in an extended
school year, such as learning a trade. The writer's arguments, however, are slightly less
developed and slightly less eloquent than those of the "Excellent"responses.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Sufficient - Student Response
Scorer Comments:
In this "Sufficient" response, the student provides a clear position in favor of a longer school
year. The student cites several examples to support that position, such as the lack of long
vacation breaks in China, but the examples are not linked to each other. The control of
language is not as strong as in the "Skillful" and "Excellent" responses: "Most students,
when they get out of school for the summer they forget what they learned the following
year." The student's control of sentence boundaries and paragraph structure, as well as the
generally appropriate use of language, make the paper clear overall.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
1
Sufficient - Student Response
Scorer Comments:
This "Sufficient" response argues against the lengthening of the school year, but the
development of the argument is slightly unclear. The writer argues that "If the vacations are
shorten the people will get tired of school, and will not pay attention in school," and
continues to offer some problems that might arise from this frustration. This point would be
more effective if it were developed and supported by concrete examples. Though this writer
has control over sentence boundaries for the most part, errors in punctuation ("Dear,
School Board"), spelling ("shorten") and syntax ("I think that we need the vacations to learn
about other stuff outside the school other than just stuff in school.") contribute to the
"Sufficient" rating of this paper.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Uneven - Student Response
1
Scorer Comments:
This "Uneven" response takes a position against extending the school year, and offers
some specific reasons why this is the best solution. The development of the paper is
uneven, however. Although the student uses paragraph breaks, within each paragraph he
or she simply lists a series of reasons rather than developing any one idea. The student's
unfamiliarity with effective syntax is displayed in some sentences such as "Students will be
getting tired. Most students will be getting lazy." Overall, this is an "Uneven" response that
shows some promising and some problematic development.
Uneven - Student Response (Please see the following page)
NAEP released item, 8th grade
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Scorer Comments:
This "Uneven" response presents many reasons for preserving vacations "as they are." The
student makes some good points, although he or she does not always express them
clearly. He or she notes that, for unmotivated students, "lengthing it will still be even worse
because that gives them more time to make mistakes..." and points out that it might be
more effective to introduce high-school level material in earlier grades. However, the paper
is rather rambling, as the student has not structured his or her ideas into a clear or ordered
format.
1
Insufficient - Student Response
Many people think that students are not learning enough in school. They want to shorten
most school vacations and make students spend more of the year in school. Other people
think that lengthening the school year and shortening vacations is a bad idea because
students use their vacations to learn important things outside of school.
What is your opinion?
Write a letter to your school board either in favor of or against lengthening the school year.
Give specific reasons to support your opinion that will convince the school board to agree
with you.
Scorer Comments:
This "Insufficient" response attempts to take a position and back it up with examples, but
spelling, grammatical and syntactical errors keep it from being effective. The writer does not
have control over sentence boundaries, and does not utilize the conventions of punctuation
or capitalization. He or she does, however, offer some concrete examples ("like working on
the car, Painting the house (walls), hunting and fishing, stuff we don't Learn in school") as
support for the original position, and tries to conclude the essay ("So see thats why we
need more time out uv school than in it."). Overall, this essay offers more substance than
those rated "Unsatisfactory," but its clear problems keep it in the "Insufficient" range.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
1
Insufficient - Student Response
Scorer Comments:
In this "Insufficient" response, the student expresses a strong opinion against lengthening
the school year: "If you make school long more kids will droop out." Pervasive errors in
spelling and sentence structure earned this paper an "Insufficient" rating. Nonetheless, the
student does provide some good reasons; they needed to be better organized and
expressed to earn a higher rating.
NAEP released item, 8th grade
1
Unsatisfactory - Student Response
Many people think that students are not learning enough in school. They want to shorten
most school vacations and make students spend more of the year in school. Other people
think that lengthening the school year and shortening vacations is a bad idea because
students use their vacations to learn important things outside of school.
What is your opinion?
Write a letter to your school board either in favor of or against lengthening the school year.
Give specific reasons to support your opinion that will convince the school board to agree
with you.
Scorer Comments:
Though this response is longer than many receiving the "Unsatisfactory" rating, the
response does not exhibit control over sentence boundaries, and has other obvious
grammatical and syntactical flaws.
1
Unsatisfactory - Student Response
Scorer Comments:
This "Unsatisfactory" response, though not badly written, is very undeveloped. It does not
really provide reasons to support the student's position against lengthening the school year
beyond saying that "we are allready learning enough stuff in the period of time of school."
NAEP released item, 8th grade
Purpose for Writing
Persuasive Writing
Persuasive writing emphasizes the reader. Its primary aim is to influence others to take some
action or to bring about change. Persuasive writing may contain much information - facts, details,
examples, comparisons, statistics, or anecdotes. Its main purpose, however, is not simply to inform
but to persuade. This type of writing involves a clear awareness of what arguments might most
affect the audience being addressed. Writing persuasively also requires the use of critical thinking
skills such as analysis, inference, synthesis, and evaluation.
Persuasive writing is called for in a variety of situations. It may involve responding to a request for
advice by giving an opinion and providing sound reasons to support it. It may also involve
presenting an argument in such a way that a particular audience will find it convincing. When there
is opposition, persuasive writing may entail refuting arguments that are contrary to the writer's point
of view.
In all persuasive writing, authors must choose the approach they will use. They may, for instance,
use emotional or logical appeals or an accommodating or demanding tone. Regardless of the
situation or approach, persuasive writers must be concerned with having a particular desired effect
upon their readers, beyond merely adding to knowledge of the topic presented.
NAEP released item, 8th grade