Key Question on Scoring of Indiana's ISTEP Writing

Q: I heard that ISTEP scorers are only allowed 30 seconds to read, which means they only skim the writing looking for key words like "first," "next," "then," "last." Is that true? They don't even read it?

A: It's good to be knowledgeable about how this high-stakes assessment is scored. To verify my information in this response, I emailed Indiana Department of Education consultants to get "from-the-horse's-mouth" answers. Here are the DOE replies I received:

"Scorers take as much time as they need to score student writing samples; they do not rush through this process! Only when a scorer has finished scoring one writing sample does the scorer move onto the next writing sample."

"Scorers read each of the writing samples. Because they know that the 'first, then, next, and last' approach is only one way for students to organize their writing and that not every student will utilize 'key' words, scorers carefully examine each writing sample before assigning a score for writing applications."