One way that your child's teacher will be assessing progress towards proficiency is through the use of rubrics. A rubric is a scoring guide used in subjective assessments. The rubric specifies sets of criteria that clearly define for both the student and the teachers what the range of acceptable and unacceptable performance looks like. The two rubrics linked here are used to evaluate students when they take the Language Arts portion for writing on the NJ ASK .
Students in grades 3 to 5 will have their writing evaluated on the New Jersey Holistic Scoring Rubric and you may find looking at the rubric with your child useful when you speak with them about writing.
Our middle school students will be scored on their writing with the New Jersey Holistic Scoring Rubric for Grades 6 to 12. Students in the middle school grades learn to write in more sophisticated ways and this is reflected in the requirements on this rubric.
Teachers will use these rubrics to evaluate your child's writing. Over time, students will show progress from one level on the rubric to the next. The rubric also provides a way for teachers and students or parents and their children to have a conversation about how writing looks now and to set goals together for progress in the future.
District Curricula
Many assessments are embedded in each subject area's curriculum. Some are based on rubrics like the examples above. As students learn, specific assignments help the teachers monitor progress, so they are considered as curriculum-based assessments. Teachers can monitor growth and how students are performing compared to the standards.
