The technical and administrative processes and activities involved in scoring student responses to essay writing questions in the Massachusetts State Board of Education's basic skills program are outlined and discussed. After a general introduction to holistic scoring, separate sections describe the roles and activities of the administrators, the…

Technical problems involved in obtaining scores for essays written by teacher candidates are addressed. The rating procedure assures that each essay is read by three raters specially trained for the task. Ratings range from "1" for incompetent or unacceptable to "4" for outstanding. The score assigned to each essay will be the…