HSPA

Dear Journal,

According to the HSPA’s rubric beginning an essay with those words gets you a better score because it’s a compositional risk. After looking at that rubric I feel sorry for the students and teachers that have to deal with the HSPA test. That rubric is too vague and general for both writing test, narrative and persuasive. As a future teacher I can see how some teachers would feel pressure to teach students tricks to score higher instead of teaching students to write. The fact that a teacher’s job and school funding depends on how well students do on test can persuade most teacher to get the best results at any cost. Then on top of a very general rubric the teachers know that the person reading the test has one minute to score the test no matter how long the test is. How the reader see if the test taker accomplished a “Logical progression of ideas” like the rubric says if he or she can’t finish reading the test in a minute. While I read a test that was three pages long I almost made it to the third page, I can’t image how could they grade the test without reading the whole test. As a matter of fact how can the reader read the closing. If so much is reading on these test I think the rubric and the grading should change.