The University of the State of New York

 

THE STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Albany, New York 12234

 

 

Information Booklet for Scoring
Regents Examinations in
Global History and Geography and
United States History and Government

GENERAL INFORMATION

The general procedures to be followed in administering Regents Examinations are provided in the publications Directions for Administering Regents Examinations (DET 541), and Regents Examinations, Regents Competency Tests, and Proficiency Examinations: School Administrator’s Manual, 2001 Edition. Copies of the Directions are shipped to schools prior to each Regents Examination period and
may also be accessed on the Department’s web site at: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/hsgen.html.
The School Administrator’s Manual may be accessed on the Department’s web site at: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa/hsinfogen/hsinfogenarch/sam2001.pdf.

Questions about general administration procedures for Regents Examinations should be directed to the Office of State Assessment at 518-474-8220 or 518-474-5902. For information about the rating of the Regents Examinations in Global History and Geography and United States History and Government, contact Gary Warren, Donna Merlau, or Greg Wilsey of the Office of State Assessment at 518-474-3860, or JoAnn Larson or Lawrence Paska of the Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Instructional Technology at 518-474-5922.

School administrators should print or photocopy this information booklet and distribute copies to all school personnel who will be scoring these examinations.

SCORING THE EXAMINATION

The Scoring Key and Rating Guide

       The Scoring Key and Rating Guide contains:

·       Correct answers to the multiple-choice questions.

·       Specific scoring rubrics for both the thematic (Part II) and document-based question (DBQ) essays (Part III B) and the DBQ scaffold (open-ended) questions (Part III A).

·       Prescored anchor papers at each essay score level, with commentary explaining why a particular student paper was awarded that specific score.

·       Prescored practice papers.

Scoring the Examination

The reliability of the scores is a fundamental concern in the measurement of the student’s
achievement. Therefore, each essay must be scored by at least two qualified teachers. The short-answer document-based scaffold questions need only be scored by one qualified teacher. Qualified raters include teachers of Grades 7-12 social studies and special education teachers who are knowledgeable about the Global History and Geography or United States History and Government curriculum. Raters should have previously received some school-level, district-level, or regional training on scoring social studies essays or scaffold (open-ended) questions as part of the turnkey training process.

It is recommended that schools with a small number of qualified social studies raters form a consortium of teachers to score as a group the answer papers from several schools.

In order to ensure reliable scoring, the principal of each high school administering the social studies Regents Examinations must appoint a scoring coordinator who will:

·       Manage the training and logistics of the scoring process.

·       Provide task-specific training, including review of the rating guide just prior to scoring.

·        Assign two teachers to rate each essay response independently, with a third teacher available to resolve discrepant scores. (A discrepant score is one that varies by more than one credit on a 5‑credit rubric.) Only one rater is needed for the scaffold questions. If staffing is sufficient, separate teams of teachers should rate the Part II thematic essay, the Part III A scaffold questions, and the Part III B essay.

Every effort should be made to avoid having a teacher rate his or her own students’ responses. When this is not feasible, a teacher should score no more than one part of his or her students’ paper (i.e., a thematic essay, the scaffold questions, or a DBQ essay).

Organizing the Rating and Recording

Before student responses can be read and rated, each school must set up a procedure for collecting, arranging, and processing the answer papers and for maintaining records of the examination results. The procedure used in a particular school should be designed to produce a reliable score for each student and to facilitate maintenance of the school’s records of each student’s score. A suggested procedure for managing the mechanics of the rating process is described on pages HG-3 and HG-4.

Scoring of Multiple-Choice Questions

Multiple-choice questions may be either hand scored or machine scored. When hand scoring, indicate by means of a check mark each incorrect or omitted answer to multiple-choice questions on the designated answer sheet. Do not place a check mark beside a correct answer. Use only red ink or red pencil. In the appropriate space on the student’s answer sheet, record the number of multiple-choice questions the student answered correctly.

Machine-scorable answer sheets must be provided and scored by the school. Answer sheets supplied by the school must provide the same number of response options as are given in the examination questions, and the choices must be labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, not A, B, C, D. Instructions for using the answer sheets must be developed locally and provided to the proctors administering the examinations.

Before answer sheets can be machine scored, several samples must be both machine and manually scored to ensure the accuracy of the machine-scoring process. All discrepancies must be rectified before student answer sheets are machine scored. When machine scoring is completed, a sample of the scored answer sheets must be scored manually to verify the accuracy of the machine-scoring process.

Detailed Directions for Training Raters to Score Student Responses

In training raters to score student responses for Part II and Part III of the examination, follow the procedures outlined below:

1.    Introduction to the Task

The introduction to the task may take place once the administration of the examination has begun. However, the actual Scoring Key and Rating Guide for this examination may not be removed
from the shrink-wrapped package of scoring keys for use by raters until after the Uniform Statewide Admission Deadline has passed.

a.    Raters read the task.

b.    Raters identify answers to the task.

c.    Raters discuss possible answers and summarize expectations for student responses.

2.    Introduction to the Specific Rubric and Anchor Papers

The introduction to the specific rubric and anchor papers may take place once the Uniform Statewide Admission Deadline has passed.

a.    Trainer leads review of specific rubric with reference to the task.

b.    Trainer leads discussion of procedures for assigning holistic scores (i.e., by matching evidence from the response to the rubric).

c.    Trainer leads review of each anchor paper and commentary.

3.    Practice Scoring Individually

a.    Raters score the practice papers independently without looking at the scores and commentaries provided after the papers.

b.    Trainer records scores and leads discussion of scoring criteria until raters feel confident enough to move on to actual scoring.

c.    If additional practice is required to reach scoring consensus, trainer may use a sample of student answer papers from the current administration of the examination.

Suggested Rating Procedure

The following procedure is recommended for managing the mechanics of the rating process. A copy of the rating sheet and the record sheet are included in the Appendix. You may make as many photocopies as are needed.

1.        The person assigned as the coordinator of the rating process, or other designated representative(s), will be responsible for coordinating the movement of papers, calculating a final score for each student’s essays, recording that information on the student’s Part I answer sheet, and determining the student’s final score for the examination.

2.        Set aside one room as a central rating room for collecting, sorting, circulating, and storing answer sheets/essay booklets and for preparing and maintaining records for these examinations.

3.        Provide a suitable location for rating of essays.

4.        Allow time to provide training for scoring the specific task for all raters immediately before the rating of the students’ responses (about 2 hours per essay and about 30-45 minutes per document). It is strongly recommended that teachers be trained on one document and score those responses, then be trained and score the responses to the next document, etc.

5.        Provide adequate time for rating (3-5 minutes per response for each essay, 1 minute per response
for each scaffold question scored 0-2, and ½ minute per response for each scaffold question
scored 0-1).

For Part II and Part III B, continue with these procedures:

6.        Each essay must be scored by at least two qualified teachers. For each essay question, divide raters into two-person teams. Designate one team member as Rater 1 and the other as Rater 2. After the examination has been administered, either keep the essay booklets together and shift them between raters or separate the students’ essay booklets into Part II and Part III B. If the essay answer booklet is separated, be sure to verify that the student has entered his or her name and the school name on the page where Part III (Document-Based Question) begins before separating the parts. After separating the essays, staple together all pages of the student’s Part II response and staple together all pages of the student’s Part III B response.

7.        Arrange the essay responses for each part according to a sequence, using whatever order is most convenient for your school, e.g., class period, alphabetical, or local identification number. Beginning with the first paper in the sequence, enter each student’s name on a copy of the record sheet. (Master for duplicating appears in the Appendix.)

8.        Divide each group of essays into bundles of 25-30 papers.

9.        Prepare a rating sheet for each bundle. (See sample rating sheet in the Appendix.) After recording the students’ names on the rating sheet, photocopy the rating sheet. Each rater will need a separate rating sheet for each bundle of 25 essay papers he or she rates. The second rater must not be aware of the score assigned by the previous rater.

10.     Distribute the bundles of essay papers to the rating teams, making sure that each rating team receives two rating sheets for each bundle of papers. Each rater on a team should rate one of the bundles and record his or her ratings on one of the rating sheets. The two raters should then exchange bundles. The second rater should only record his or her scores on the second rating sheet. No scores or corrections should be indicated on the essay papers.

11.     After each team has completed rating a bundle, the team should return those answer papers to the central rating room. Remove the rating sheets completed by each rater from the bundles and enter the scores on the record sheet. Make sure there are two independent ratings for each response. Enter the resolved scores in the appropriate columns on the record sheet.

12.     Review the two scores for each student to determine if the student’s scores for that essay are discrepant, i.e., a difference of more than one credit between the two scores. Separate the students’ responses with discrepant scores and make another bundle. Prepare a separate rating sheet for those discrepant papers. List the names of the students on a new rating sheet and attach the sheet to the corresponding bundle of student responses. Assign each of these bundles to a rater to obtain a third independent rating of the students’ responses. Make sure that the third rater is not one of the original two raters of that task and that the third rater has undergone the training for scoring that task.

13.     After the necessary third ratings have been obtained, remove the rating sheets from the bundles of student responses and determine the resolved scores by using the method for resolving discrepant scores described on the next page. Enter the resolved scores in the appropriate columns on the record sheet.

14.     Transfer the resolved scores to the appropriate spaces on the students’ Part I answer sheets.

15.     All rating sheets and record sheets used in scoring the social studies Regents Examinations must be kept for at least one year by the school where they were administered.

For Part III A:

1.        Follow a similar procedure for processing the papers.

2.        The short-answer (open-ended) questions need only be scored by one qualified teacher.

3.        The scores for each scaffold question may be recorded in the student’s examination booklet.

4.        Record the total Part III A score in the space provided on the student’s Part I answer sheet.

Method for Determining the Score for Each Essay

Two Ratings:

       1.    Compare the two ratings.

       2.    If the two ratings agree, the student receives that score.

       3.    If the two ratings are contiguous, average the two scores.

       4.    If the two ratings are not contiguous, a third rating is necessary.

Three Ratings:

       1.    Compare the three ratings.

       2.    If two of the three ratings agree, the student receives that score.

       3.    If the three ratings are different, the student receives the middle score.

Examples:

 

       * If the final score ends in .5, do not round at this point.

 

Entering Essay Scores on the Record Sheet

 

The examples below show how students’ scores should be recorded on the record sheet.

 

 

Determining the Student’s Final Examination Score

 

      

 

A box like the one shown to the right will appear on the student’s
Part I answer sheet. In this box, record the number of correct answers for
the Part I, Multiple-Choice Questions and total credits awarded for the
Part III A, Scaffold (open-ended) Questions on the appropriate lines of
 the student’s Part I answer paper. Add these two numbers together and
 write that score in the box labeled “Total Part I and III A Score.”

 

      Record the essay scores for Part II and Part III B on the appropriate
 lines. Add the two essay scores together. If the total essay score
ends in .5, round up that score to the nearest whole number at this time.
 Write that score in the box labeled “Total Essay Score.”

 

 

       To determine the student’s final examination score, use the chart
provided for each administration on the Department’s web site:
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/osa. Locate the student’s Total Part I and
Part III A Score on the left side of the chart and the student’s Total Essay
 Score across the top of the chart. The point where those two scores
intersect is the student’s final examination score. The format of the
chart is illustrated below. The chart provided for each administration will
include scores ranging from 0 to 100 within the cells of the chart. Because
the number of scaffold questions may change from one examination to
another and scaled scores in the conversion chart change in relation to
raw scores, it is crucial that, for each administration, you use only the
conversion chart provided for that specific administration to determine
the student’s final score.