During the 1999 - 2000 school year, the Kentucky Board of Education instituted the Commonwealth Accountability Testing System, which includes open-response and multiple-choice questions in core content areas as well as portfolio development in writing. The writing portion of the test is scored with a rubric that rates the writing on a scale from 0 (very low) to 4 (high). The BCMS instructional specialist finds this particular part of the test a useful teaching tool for eighth grade students because it engages students in a meaningful assignment about effective writing. She has instituted an activity called "scrimmage" tests, which proceed as follows: About every six weeks, the language arts teachers find in their mailboxes a set of student responses from a previous writing test and a rubric. The responses are not marked and the students do not know which of the five responses received which score. Their task is to study the rubric, so that they understand what constitutes a high quality response, and then to look at the samples and score them. The students then try writing responses of their own to the same prompt. They exchange papers and use the rubric to score one another's responses. The students are extremely fair about it, according to the instructional specialist. A student will even tell his best buddy, "Hey, you got a 2 and this is why."

The BCMS students see and understand the standards. Marsha Reddick, a seventh grade science teacher, says, "The [standards] are in front of them all the time. The teachers tell them what they are expected to know and understand, what they have to master before they start an activity." In one interdisciplinary classroom that integrates art, math, and science, the students were working on a group presentation on empathy. When asked how they would be assessed, one student said that the teacher gives the class a rubric for how they will be graded before they do their presentations. In several classes, some of the rubrics are posted on the walls or students pull them out of their notebooks. Not all students can articulate what a rubric is, but they can tell you what the criteria are for being graded on any given assignment, and they know their work is being assessed against an articulated performance standard.

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