Ch. 10 Reliability

I’ve always wondered what constituted “good writing” in schools and universities.  We’ve all had that experience in which we got A’s in one class but C’s or B’s in another class.  A grade you get from one teacher would suggest you’re a proficient writer and you have much potential to be a great writer, whereas a grade you get from another teacher would suggest you have absolutely no business in being a writer.  Chapter 10 sheds some light on this situation for me.  Working for a junior high school as a tutor has given me the benefits of being an observer.  I don’t only observe the students, but I also observe the teachers and their assignments for students.  What I’ve been finding, for years now,  is that many of the English teachers do not collaborate or communicate with each other.  Some even avoid each other at all costs....The gossip that goes on in that school is so dramatic.  Anyway, their Reliability in assessment is lacking a lot... I’ve tutored/mentored students who’ve asked why they would be able to get A’s in their essays when they had one particular English teacher and then nothing higher than a C when they had another English teacher.  I would just say well maybe so-and-so is looking for something else when it comes to writing essays.  “Unless teachers in a school work together to make their assessments and evaluations reliable, some students will indeed get high grades on papers in one class and low grades in another, even though their writing remains pretty much the same from teacher to teacher” (305).  I agree with Williams.  I see that most teacher and university professors don’t really work as a unit when it comes to what they look for in “good writing”.  Now I have a clearer understanding why “good writing” may not exist because good writing is really just subjective.  What gives me hope in my other job at Cerritos College, however, is that the English Department as Cerritos College is actually attempting to work collaboratively...most of them anyway.  We have a “Success Center” which has replaced our writing center and it seems that the faculty may actually have reached a consensus on what they may consider good writing.  I’m curious to see how this affects the students.