How does the short answer grading scale work?

The CommonLit short answer scale is based on the Common Core Literary Analysis 0-4 Writing Rubric. 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)

A copy of the CommonLit Short Answer Response Rubric can be found here.