Utah board staff outline major changes to RISE writing assessments, call for field-test participation

Megan Lopez, Utah State Board of Education secondary English language arts assessment specialist, told a virtual training session that the presentation “is solely focusing on the changes to the RISE writing assessments.” The session, delivered to nearly 200 registered attendees, reviewed new prompt language, separate rubrics for content and conventions, and a field-testing schedule to train an automatic scoring engine.

Why it matters: The changes affect how teachers prepare students for state writing tasks and how schools will receive and interpret writing results. State staff said scores for this year’s revised assessments will be delayed while new cut scores are established and the scoring engine is trained.

State staff described two RISE writing pathways. Benchmarks (optional) are available for grades 3–8; summative writing is required only for grades 5 and 8. “Benchmarks are available to all grades. They are not required,” Lopez said. The benchmarks are being field-tested with new prompts and rubrics; summative prompts are also new for grades 5 and 8.

Teresa McIntyre, assessment development coordinator, said the state needs large samples from the benchmark field test so the vendor can train the automated scorer. “We need 5,000 student responses per essay in order to actually be able to train our scoring engine,” McIntyre said. Staff described the benchmark field-test window as beginning in mid-February and running through the end of March (with a possible extension) and said summative range finding for scoring will take place in June.

Rubrics and scoring: The state replaced the previous three-dimension rubric with two separate rubrics for each grade: one dedicated to conventions and one to content (purpose, organization, evidence, elaboration). Each rubric uses a six-point scale. Staff emphasized that the two rubric scores should remain separate and not be summed into a single score. McIntyre explained that the conventions rubric will be maintained on a six-point scale but reported out on a 0.5–3 scale for reporting purposes; staff said the intent is to avoid over-emphasizing conventions at the expense of content.

Prompt and standards changes: Prompts no longer specify paragraph counts (for example, they no longer say “write a 2- to 3-paragraph essay”); instead, prompts ask students to produce writing that appropriately answers the task. For argumentative prompts the language now centers on making and supporting a claim based on the provided passage set; informative prompts ask students to “write an explanation” based on evidence and information in the stimulus. Staff said the prompts and rubrics align to revised Utah standards and that the upper grades typically provide three passages in a passage set (younger grades at least two, sometimes with a graphic).

Field testing and teacher participation: Benchmarks will be used as the field-test vehicle for the new prompts and rubrics. Staff said the field test itself is not compensated; teachers who later participate in paid range-finding work will be compensated (district substitute pay during the school year or direct pay for summer work). State staff asked districts and individual teachers to sign up so the scoring vendor can obtain the necessary sample size.

Availability and supports: The new rubrics and training tests were posted to the RISE portal; staff plans to add exemplars (annotated student responses) for grades 5 and 8 that were used in range finding. Staff noted that training-test essays submitted for the field test will not be visible to classroom teachers during the field test because the system does not populate student writing without a score. Staff said final writing and ELA scores for the year will be released in fall 2025.

Implementation notes for educators: Staff reiterated several operational points addressed in the session: local education agencies decide whether to deliver the writing session in one sitting or across multiple sessions; students may return to the same prompt across sessions if needed; formatting (indents or line spacing) will not be penalized; teachers do not grade their students’ field-test essays unless they are part of the range-finding committees.

Resources and next steps: Staff posted the rubrics on the RISE portal and said a separate training on reading/ELA changes would be held the following week. They also pointed attendees to core guides, the UEN writing collection, Utah Compose, and contact emails for additional support. State staff urged participation in the benchmark field test so the state can offer automatically scored writing benchmarks in future years.

The session closed with staff reiterating how the changes reflect the revised Utah standards and with a request that districts share the materials and encourage teacher participation in field testing.