How are Part A/Part B questions scored?

There are different question formats for Assessment Questions within a lesson assignment, including Part A/Part B Questions. These questions are heavily featured on standardized tests, and can often cause a lot of confusion for students. These questions are related (in other words, a student’s success for Part B depends upon their success on Part A).

Here is a breakdown of how scoring Part A/Part B Questions would work on a 5 question lesson assignment:

• If the student gets Part A correct and Part B correct, then he or she will receive full credit for both questions. The score for this assignment would be a 5/5 (100%).
• If the student gets Part A correct and Part B incorrect, he or she will receive full credit for Part A, and zero credit for Part B. The score for this assignment would be 4/5 (80%).
• If the student gets Part A incorrect, then he or she will get zero credit for Part A, and Part B will be omitted from the final assignment score -- regardless of if the student’s answer for Part B is correct or incorrect. That means it does not count towards the student’s score at all (it cannot hurt nor help them). This is because Part B’s correctness is dependent upon Part A being correct. In this case, the score for this assignment would be a 3/4 (75%).

What about Part A/Part B questions where PART B is a short-answer question that requires teacher scoring?

Here’s an example:

1. PART A: Which of the following describes a main idea of the article?

a. Wisdom is no match for cleverness.
b. Sometimes the most unsuspecting characters are the wisest.
c. Only fools ask to be made to look foolish.
d. Everyone has the potential to be a hero.

2. PART B: Cite evidence from the text to support your answer to PART A.

[Enter short answer. Answers will be scored on a 0-4 rubric].

Short answers are always graded by the teacher. In the case above, a student who answers Part A correctly receives full credit for Part A, and the teacher determines his or her score on Part B. A student who answers Part A incorrectly receives zero credit for Part A. In this case, the student can receive points for Part B, depending on how the teacher scores the answer.