New ODE Writing Rubrics

Oregon has new writing scoring guides!

Revisions were designed to provide better alignment between the writing scoring guide and the Common Core. The design team also created two versions of the Revised Writing Scoring Guide: one for narrative writing (personal or fictional) and the other for explanatory or argumentative writing. Only the Revised Writing Scoring Guides may be used to score High School Essential Skills Work Samples. The Legacy Writing Scoring Guide (the old one) is no longer approved for this purpose.

Here are the new rubrics:

• Revised Narrative Writing Rubric
• Revised Informative/Argumentative Writing Rubric

Please note: The rubric itself does not represent an increase of rigor. Extensive work was done to assure that a passing score of 4 on the Revised Rubric required the same level of proficiency that was demonstrated on the Legacy Rubric.

ODE is also recommending that the Revised Writing Scoring Guide be used in 3-8 classrooms for the scoring of classroom embedded work samples for the purpose of fulfilling the Local Performance Assessment requirement, as well as other writing assessments. This practice provides students with a foundation around the scoring of writing, and supports the development of skills required to meet the Essential Skills graduation requirement.

Student friendly versions of the rubrics for grades 6-8 are below:

• Revised Student Language: Narrative
• ​Revised Student Language: Informative/ Argumentative

Additional Posted resources on the ODE Assessment page currently include:

• Student work scored using both scoring guides
• Resources explaining the development
• Information on the validation process to assure that the new rubric did not increase rigor
• Resources to support use in the 3-8 classroom, and cross-content use at the HS