Grading for extra pay, redux.

It's 9:15 Friday night, and I've just finished barnstorming through 130 Regents' essays, reading them through once and assigning a rating of 1, 2, or 3 to each. 2 and 3 are passing, 1 is failing. How long did it take, you ask? My rate's up to about 25 essays an hour, so all told, that's 5 hours. I don't calculate the hourly rate, which would be depressing--we get paid a flat rate per essay--but it's an easy way to make some chump change. And if there are still a bunch of unrated essays at the end of the rating period, as was the case in the spring, I hope to get selected as one of the lucky few to finish up (mo' money!).

There are three rating periods a year--one each for spring, summer, and fall. I've rated these essays for several semesters now and have it down to a science. It used to be super-easy for me to tell what rating an essay should get after reading the first paragraph, but not so much this time. Several started out weak but got better halfway through and managed to pass, and not a few started out as superior and quickly slid into average. One of our stated mandates, which probably should go without saying, is to read the whole essay and not come too quickly to a decision.

The conditions for writing this essay must be daunting for students to whom writing doesn't come easily: they get one hour (if ESL, an hour and a half) and a choice of four topics, and they don't know any of the topics in advance. If a student fails, he has to retake it until he passes, because it's a graduation requirement. In some cases, depending on how many hours the student's acquired, he has to take a 10-week essay prep course before he re-takes the test.

It's "writing on demand" in the purest sense. I don't know how well I would do. Many of the topics seem to invite shitty writing: unfocused, unorganized, shallow. At the same time, it really doesn't take much to pass and thus demonstrate the state-mandated definition of "competency." That word strikes me as hollow, a euphemism for "average," "boring," "drone," "automaton," etc. Writing on demand has its merits, but this version of it was created by government officials eager to crunch numbers and create pie charts.

What was I talking about, anyway? I hope y'all are reading the wonderful Educated and Poor, written by fellow college professor and Regents' rater Miss Kitty. Look for her guffaw-worthy excerpts from actual Regents' essays (such as these) to get an idea of the writing this test can sometimes inspire.