Record MA24-1 · 2024–2025
MA24-1: Source Based Comparative Analysis
Written and published in the 2024 grade 10 MCAS cycle. Massachusetts grade 10; exact age unknown.
Original student excerpt
In both excerpts Becoming Maria and The Yellow House, both of the main characters have experiences that lead to important realizations in their lives. In Becoming Maria, the main character Sonia has one main experience that completely changes her outlook on life. She goes to a play, and she experiences something she's never felt before. She has always been stuck in her neighborhood, not really thinking anything of it. She thought it was boring and didn't like it. She had a bland outlook on life.
Six consecutive sentences from the image response, visually checked; presentation italics removed, original language preserved.
Prompt and conditions
Exact prompt. Based on Becoming Maria and The Yellow House, write an essay that explains how the authors’ experiences lead to important realizations in their lives. Be sure to use details from both excerpts to develop your essay.
- Source conditions
- Two Supplied Texts; supplied texts; internet and grammar check forbidden.
- Time
- Exact duration unknown. Untimed through the school day.
- Production / archive
- CBT default, paper accommodation possible; individual mode unknown; anonymized image response in agency PDF.
- Drafting
- in-session work only; no post-feedback revision.
- Population and selection
- Massachusetts grade 10 operational MCAS response; age, district, mode, and supports unknown. Operational response purposively published as a score-point sample.
Scorer and feedback role
Institutional Assessor. Not an authenticated classroom-teacher feedback pair.
- Original source classification
- 6 of 8 — moderately developed ideas; top conventions. Idea Development 3/5 plus Standard English Conventions 3/3, sample D.
- Form
- Scoring Annotation; response-specific.
- Revision after feedback
- None survives.
“While the introduction and conclusion are brief, the overall organization of the response is moderate.”
Read the evidence coding
Conceptual claimBoth narrators discover that their prior view of the world was limited, literally and figuratively.
Ideas and relationships3 coded units. Art is linked to possibility, glasses to literal clarity, and the limited-view parallel joins the sources.
AbstractionSustained
Causal reasoningAnalogical Interpretive
Qualification / counterargumentNone
Evidence useBoth Sources Quote And Paraphrase
OrganizationOne Source Per Body Then Synthesis
Sentence controlControlled
Lexical precisionGeneral With Exact Distinction
Articulation limitTransformation is summarized more than authorial development is analyzed.
These are descriptive codes, not scores. No composite or rank is calculated. Idea Development 3/5 is moderately developed; Conventions 3/3 creates a conventions skew; not average performance.