"Hemingway wasn't on the committee."

Archived from The Tampa Bay Times, 1994.  Hehe. My first job....

Who says your kids can't write? Read on

By
STEPHEN HEGARTY

Published May 22, 1994 | Updated Oct. 7, 2005

The fourth-grader's essay was full of short sentences. Charming in a way, but a little choppy.

One reader-in-training decided the youngster had a lot on the ball, that the terse sentences were used to good effect. But according to the official guidelines devised by a statewide committee, the fourth-grader's writing was just plain choppy.

The reader argued: Didn't Hemingway build his considerable reputation on clipped, economic sentences?

The answer: "Hemingway wasn't on the committee."

The essay got a low score. Next.

Welcome to the reader qualification center in Tampa, where hundreds of college-educated people came in March to learn how to evaluate student essays for the state. If they measured up, these readers-in-training earned the right to sit in a room day after day, for six weeks, reading essays by Florida's fourth- and 10th-graders.

They were scoring the Florida Writes! test _ the state's $2.5-million effort to assess students' writing. More than 381,000 Florida children in grades 4, 8 and 10 took the test this year. Results were sent to school districts last week.

As far as teachers, students and parents are concerned, the writing test works this way: Kids spend 45 minutes in school writing an essay. Months later, they get back a score.

But where do the scores come from? Who decides that Florida's children, as a group, rate a 2 or a 3 on a scale of 1 to 6? How is the writing evaluated?

To answer those questions, spend a little time with the official state readers. For most of April and early March, each of the readers waded through thousands of student essays, working for $7 an hour in an office building near downtown Tampa.

"It's not bad work, especially if you're interested in writing and education. But if I have to read another essay about a fourth-grader's mom, I'm gonna go nuts."

That's veteran reader Jack McElhinney, a SEMIRETIRED television filmmaker/shopping mall Santa Claus/nudist who sports a remarkable snow-white beard. McElhinney tagged along with a friend and said he secretly hoped he wouldn't qualify this year, so he could go play tennis. But, alas, he caught on quickly and turned out to be one of the speediest readers in the group.

Out of the nearly 300 people who interviewed for the reader jobs, about 180 were invited to the three-day training session. If they learned to accurately score seven out of 10 papers consistently, they got the job. All but a handful of them qualified as readers.

Steven Adkins is a recent Stetson University graduate (a B.A. in history and humanities) who plans to go on to graduate school at the University of South Florida. He has the casual, slightly disheveled look of a student about him.

"This is an interesting job, and I think it's important," he said. "If a kid can write, if he can get his thoughts down on paper, he can do a lot of things. This is the sort of thing they should be testing."

Adkins was looking forward to his six weeks as an official state reader. Interesting work. Decent pay. You don't have to wear a tie.

"Acceptance and conformity"

There's a terrific bit of irony at work here. The readers are a diverse, intelligent, sometimes eccentric bunch. They all have ideas about what good writing is. But the readers' job here is conformity.

If the scores are going to be meaningful, the readers have to accept the state's rubric - the guidelines for judging good writing. Readers are supposed to consider things like focus, organization, supporting ideas and examples, transitions. Spelling and punctuation count for something, but they're not stressed.

Readers have to leave their own ideas at the door and apply the state rules consistently.

"I wish it were a job about your personal input. But it's not," said Bob Kampa, a testing official who supervised training. During the pressure-filled first days of qualifying, Kampa explains the readers' job plainly. "Acceptance and conformity. That's what this is about."

The first few times he says this, readers chuckle. After he repeats it a few more times, the response is a grim, knowing nod.