Grade California Work in the Language Your Score Reports Use
Smarter Balanced reports in claims, not standards. GradingPal tags your rubric criteria to the standards you teach and rolls them up the same way, so what you see in December lines up with what the state sends back in August.
You approve every tag and every mark. Standards are optional — everything else works without them.
Shared Standards, a Reporting Layer of Its Own
California does not write its own standards. It uses Common Core for English and mathematics and NGSS for science, each with state additions. What is distinctly Californian is the assessment system on top: CAASPP, which is Smarter Balanced for English and maths, CAST for science, and a Spanish assessment alongside. Smarter Balanced reports at claim level rather than standard level, which is the part that matters for grading. California’s standards and CAASPP in full are covered in our complete guide.
The Work Three Assessments Ask For
CAASPP is three tests, and between them they ask for a lot of extended writing. All of it is marked here the same way — against your rubric, tagged to your standards.
- Performance-task practice
- The full write, with sources — the biggest single piece
- Evidence-based writing
- ELA claims on reading and writing
- Maths problem sets
- Communicating reasoning, not just the answer
- Science investigations and CER
- CAST’s constructed responses
- Research and inquiry tasks
- The claim nobody sets enough practice for
Tag Once. Every Grade After That Builds the Picture.
Pick California’s standards for the class once, at the start of the year. On any rubric, each criterion has a suggest action — GradingPal proposes the matching standards and you accept or dismiss each one. Mark the work as usual. The evidence lands against the code, so a standard is not a checkbox but a list of the things students actually wrote. Across a term, that becomes a picture of where a class is against each standard.
What This Doesn’t Claim to Do
It does not predict how a student will do on a state test. It does not replace your district’s reporting. It does not certify that your rubric is correctly aligned — you tag the criterion, and GradingPal records the alignment you set. And a teacher approves every mark before it counts.
It does not score to Smarter Balanced’s own rubrics or produce a claim-level score in the state’s scale — the roll-up shows you your own evidence organised the way the report is organised, and it is not the report. And it does not judge a student’s English proficiency. It marks the work against the criteria you wrote.
Your Standards Roll Up. So Does the Report.
Smarter Balanced does not report standard by standard. Each subject has four claims — in English, reading, writing, listening, and research and inquiry — with assessment targets beneath them. When the results come back, they come back in claims. So a teacher tracking her class standard by standard is holding a picture in one vocabulary and being judged in another.
GradingPal tags at the level you teach — the standard, or the target beneath a claim — and rolls the evidence up the way the reporting does. You still see the detail underneath: which specific piece of writing, which criterion, which student. The roll-up is a view, not a replacement for the evidence.
This matters more in California than most places, because the tests are on different clocks. Science is assessed in grades five, eight and once in high school, so a seventh-grade science teacher is building evidence toward something her students will not sit for another year — and a picture that only covers one term is not much use to her.
When the Writing Is in a Second Language
More California classrooms include English learners than in any other state, and marking their extended writing is where a rubric earns its keep. If your criterion is about the strength of an argument, GradingPal judges the argument — grammar affects the mark only when your rubric says it does. Feedback can go back in the student’s home language while the work itself is marked in English, so a family reads the same comment the student does.
One Claim, One Performance Task
- The claim
- Smarter Balanced ELA Claim 2 — writing: produce effective and well-grounded writing for a range of purposes.
- The rubric criterion
- “Uses evidence from the provided sources to support the position.”
- The tag
- The standard you teach, sitting beneath that claim — suggested by GradingPal, approved by you.
- The work
- A full performance task with sources.
- What lands
- The student’s own sentence against the standard, and the standard rolled up under the claim your August report will use.
Which is what makes December’s picture and August’s report the same conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does GradingPal support California’s standards?
Yes. California uses Common Core for English and maths and NGSS for science, both with state additions, and all of it is in the catalogue. Pick the sets your class teaches toward once, and every assignment can tag against them.
Can I see results by Smarter Balanced claim?
Yes. Tag at the level you teach and the evidence rolls up the way the reporting does, with the detail still underneath — which piece of work, which criterion, which student. It is your evidence organised the way the state organises its report, not a copy of the report.
Can it grade performance tasks?
It grades the writing, against your rubric. A performance task is a long piece with sources, which is the most time-consuming thing a California department sets and the thing a rubric is best at. Upload a set and hand back specific feedback while the task is still fresh.
Will it tell me how my class will do on CAASPP?
No. It shows what students demonstrated on the work you set, against the standards you tagged. A prediction is a different question with a different method, and this is not it.
How does it handle writing from English learners?
The same way it handles any writing — against the criteria you wrote. If your rubric is about the argument, grammar affects the mark only where you have said it should. Feedback can be returned in the student’s home language while the work is marked in English. It makes no judgement about a student’s English proficiency.
Does science work the same way, given CAST is only sat in some grades?
Yes, and that is the point of tagging it. Science standards are taught across every year but assessed in a few, so the evidence has to accumulate. A picture built over two years is worth more in science here than a picture built over one term.
Mark One Performance Task
Tag your rubric to the standards you teach, mark a set with sources, and watch the evidence roll up the way your score report will.