WHAT WE REALLY VALUE

UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Figures........................................................................................viiiList of Tables.........................................................................................viiiPrologue...............................................................................................ixAcknowledgments........................................................................................xiii1 To Tell the Truth: Beyond Rubrics....................................................................12 Studying Rubric-Free Assessment at City University: Research Context and Methods.....................163 Textual Criteria: What They Really Valued, Part 1....................................................324 Contextual Criteria: What They Really Valued, Part 2.................................................735 A Model for Dynamic Criteria Mapping of Communal Writing Assessment..................................119Appendix A: Assignments for English 1 Essays...........................................................139Appendix B: Selected Sample Texts from City University.................................................142Midterm essays.........................................................................................142"Anguish"..............................................................................................142"Gramma Sally".........................................................................................144"Pops".................................................................................................146End-term portfolios....................................................................................148Portfolio 2............................................................................................148"Professional Helper" (from Portfolio 3)...............................................................156Portfolio 4............................................................................................157Appendix C: Tabulation of Votes on Sample Texts........................................................165Appendix D: Sample Interview Questions.................................................................166Appendix E: Explanation of References to City University Transcripts...................................167References.............................................................................................169Index..................................................................................................173

Chapter One

College writing research in the disciplinary period which began, roughly, in the mid-1960s has not told us much about exactly what it is that teachers value in student writing. Researchers who have used statistical methodologies to address this question have thrown little light on the issue.... And guidelines published by English departments-at least at places where I've taught-are even less specific. An "A" paper is one that "displays unusual competence"; hence, an "A" paper is an "A" paper. Faigley, Fragments of Rationality

Consider your favorite college or university writing program. Instructors in the program may include tenure-line faculty, adjunct faculty, graduate teaching assistants, and an administrator or two. Some are new to the program; some have been there thirty years. Several of them are trained in the field of composition and teach it by choice; others teach writing only when they can't teach literature; a few are on the writing staff mainly because it's a paying job. This diverse troupe probably delivers one or two required introductory composition courses to nearly every student who appears at your institution's door. Though they diverge considerably in their backgrounds, emphases, interests, and areas of expertise in teaching rhetoric, your program's instructors almost certainly teach a clearly established curriculum, including common readings, writing assignments, writing processes, and educational goals.

Now ask yourself about these teachers of college composition the question Lester Faigley implies in the epigraph above: What exactly do they value in their students' writing? More likely than not, your writing program's best answer will be found in a rubric or scoring guide, the "guidelines published by English departments" Faigley mentions. Hundreds of such guides for writing assessment are available in books and on the worldwide web, and many writing programs have their own. A prominent example can be found in the back of Edward M. White's Teaching and Assessing Writing (298). White's "Sample Holistic Scoring Guide" ("prepared by committees in the California State University English departments, 1988") identifies six levels of rhetorical achievement. At CSU, a student's text qualifies for the highest rating ("superior") if it meets the following five criteria:

Addresses the question fully and explores the issues thoughtfully Shows substantial depth, fullness, and complexity of thought Demonstrates clear, focused, unified, and coherent organization Is fully developed and detailed Evidences superior control of diction, syntactic variety, and transition; may have a few minor flaws

As a statement of the key rhetorical values of CSU English departments, I find this guide admirable in its clarity, simplicity, and emphasis on intellectual and rhetorical substance over surface mechanics or format concerns. Furthermore, by presenting not only levels of achievement ("incompetent" to "superior") but also the five specific evaluative criteria quoted above, it goes far beyond the tautological "A = A" formulation that Faigley protests.

But does it go far enough? The strength of the hundreds of rubrics like White's lies in what they include; their great weakness is what they leave out. They present to the world several inarguably important criteria endorsed by the local writing program administrator as the criteria by which writing should be evaluated in the relevant program. They omit any mention of the dozens of other criteria (such as "interest," "tone," or "legibility") by which any rhetorical performance is also likely to be judged. In pursuit of their normative and formative purposes, traditional rubrics achieve evaluative brevity and clarity. In so doing, they surrender their descriptive and informative potential: responsiveness, detail, and complexity in accounting for how writing is actually evaluated.

We need to critically examine such representations of our rhetorical values on the basis of what they teach-and fail to teach-students, faculty, and the public about the field of writing instruction. Theories of learning, composition, and writing assessment have evolved to the point at which the method and technology of the rubric now appear dramatically at odds with our ethical, pedagogical, and political commitments. In short, traditional rubrics and scoring guides prevent us from telling the truth about what we believe, what we teach, and what we value in composition courses and programs.

Theorists of knowledge from Nietzsche to Foucault and beyond have taught us that calls for "truth" cannot go unexplained....