How does the short answer grading scale work?

CommonLit lessons use a four-point scale for short answer responses, and teachers are encouraged to conform their grading to the policies and templates in use in their schools. While CommonLit provides an exemplar guide for each question, it is up to teachers to determine whether a student meets or does not meet these expectations.

Actual point values for short-answer responses depend on the number of questions in the assignment. A short-answer question is worth the same number of points as the multiple-choice questions. For example, say an assignment has 4 assessment questions (3 multiple-choice and 1 short-answer question). In this case, each question is worth 25 percentage points. Scoring the short-answer responses for this assignment would work as follows:

1. Score of 0 = 0% credit (so, in this case, 0 percentage points out of 25)
2. Score of 1 = 25% credit (in this case, 6.25 percentage points out of 25)
3. Score of 2 = 50% credit (in this case, 12.5 percentage points out of 25)
4. Score of 3 = 75% credit (in this case, 18.75 percentage points out of 25)
5. Score of 4 = 100% credit (in this case, 25 percentage points out of 25)