What the test actually asks
You get two short articles. They take opposite positions on one question. You get forty-five minutes and a box to type in. The instruction is always some version of the same sentence: analyze both positions to determine which one is better supported, and use specific evidence from the articles.
Read that instruction again, because almost everyone answers a different question. You are not being asked which side is right. You are not being asked what you think about school start times or tipping. You are being asked which of two writers built the better case out of the evidence in front of them — and you can be taught to see that.
The two articles are always close. Neither one is the answer. On a real test both sides can be argued, and the scoring does not care which you pick; it cares whether you named real evidence, from both articles, and said what it does and does not prove. A student who picks the side with the weaker argument and analyzes it accurately will outscore a student who picks the stronger side and only agrees with it.
Three things are scored: your analysis of the arguments and evidence; how well the response is developed and organized; and clarity and command of written English.
Ten sets
Each set is a full task: two articles, the prompt in the test's own words, a clock, and a place to write. Below a dividing line on each page, and folded away until you open it, is the part that is not on the test — an account of exactly what each article offered, where each one is weak, and two different essays that could both score well on the same set.
Do the writing first. The teaching is worth much less to a student who read it before the clock started.
-
1
Should school start later?
Two members of one school district, on the first bell. Should Ridgeline Public Schools move the high school's first bell from 7:15 to 8:30?
-
2
Should the block stay closed to cars?
A safety coalition and a merchants' association, on the same six blocks. Should the open-street closure on 4th Avenue between Grand and Metropolitan be made permanent?
-
3
Should tipping be replaced by a set wage?
Two restaurant workers, disagreeing. Should the state end the tipped minimum wage and require restaurants to pay the full minimum wage instead?
-
4
Should the office require everyone on site?
A manager and an analyst, in the same department. Should Harrow Casualty require its claims analysts to work on site five days a week?
-
5
Print or digital?
Two librarians, on where the money should go. Should the library system shift its collections budget from 78 percent print toward 60 percent print over three years?
-
6
Should public college be free?
A college president and a budget analyst, on one bill. Should the state legislature pass the Open Door Act, which would make tuition free at every public college in the state for every resident who attends full time, whatever the family’s income?
-
7
Should a city job require a degree?
A personnel director and a council member, on the city’s hiring rules. Should the City of Harbor Falls remove the four-year college degree requirement from most of its civil-service jobs and hire on skills and experience instead?
-
8
Should the city keep paying a guaranteed income?
A program director and a city budget official, on a two-year experiment. Should the City of Millbrook make its guaranteed-income pilot permanent, paying 400 low-income households $500 a month with no conditions?
-
9
Should phones be locked away all day?
A principal and a parent, on the school day. Should the Westbrook School District require high school students to lock their phones in pouches from the first bell to the last, including lunch?
-
10
Should the state pay for college in prison?
A professor who teaches in prisons and a state senator, on one budget line. Should the state spend $14 million a year to offer college degree programs in all of its prisons?
The first five are in a deliberate order. The first is the easiest to see through; the fifth gives you nothing to fall back on but the articles themselves, which is the condition you will be in on test day.
Sets 6 to 10 are about questions that are in the news now. In each one, both writers cite real studies and real programs, with the names and years given, so you can look them up. The towns, districts, and writers are made up, as they are on the test.
Before your first one
Read The Language Arts Flyover if you have not, and work the writing prompts in Rights on Paper, which ask for this same judgment at one-third the length and build toward it reading by reading.
On the reading side, the skills this task is assembled from are taught one at a time in The Talking Hands Series: Quiz 2 on which details support a claim, Quiz 4 on conclusions tied to the sentences that earn them, and Quiz 5 on citing the one sentence that carries a claim. If the essay feels impossible, it is usually one of those three that has not landed yet.
When our ten run out, there are fourteen more from outside — nine from the people who write the GED, five from adult educators in Florida. Free, with the clock and the writing box here. Those have no teaching folded in; they are the task itself.
When you have written one, read How the essay is scored: the three traits in plain words, a sixth task to write under the clock, and two responses to that task — one earning a 6, one earning about a 2 — with the reasoning behind each score.