Record MA25-1 · 2024–2025
MA25-1: Source Based Comparative Analysis
Written and published in the 2025 grade 10 MCAS cycle. Massachusetts grade 10; exact age unknown.
Original student excerpt
The author is describing the harsh effects the dust had on the crops and environment during the drought. He is using descriptive language to describe how difficult it was to have crops during this time, which made people money. Steinback also takes on impracticality when describing how there were no crops, which mean't no money.
Three consecutive sentences from the agency-published response; original spelling and punctuation preserved.
Prompt and conditions
Exact prompt. Based on ‘Letters from the Dust Bowl’ and The Grapes of Wrath, write an essay analyzing how the authors develop the conflict between the people and their environment. Be sure to use details from both the letter and the excerpt to develop your essay.
- Source conditions
- Two Supplied Texts; supplied texts; only authorized dictionaries/glossaries for eligible students.
- Time
- Exact duration unknown. Two-session secure test; exact individual duration unknown.
- Production / archive
- CBT default, paper accommodation possible; individual mode unknown; anonymized or 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, time, 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.
“Although both body paragraphs discuss the approaches used by the authors to develop the conflict between the people and their environment, the contrast in the authors’ writing styles could have been further explained.”
Read the evidence coding
Conceptual claimHenderson is practical/direct while Steinbeck is empathic/descriptive in developing environmental conflict.
Ideas and relationships2 coded units. Style is linked to reader empathy, and environmental damage is linked to crop and economic harm.
AbstractionSustained
Causal reasoningInterpretive
Qualification / counterargumentNone
Evidence useOne Quote From Each Source
OrganizationSource By Source Comparison
Sentence controlControlled
Lexical precisionAmbitious But Unstable
Articulation limitThe proposed stylistic contrast is asserted more than analyzed.
These are descriptive codes, not scores. No composite or rank is calculated. Idea Development 3/5 is general/moderately developed; Conventions 3/3 creates a conventions skew; not a state average.