The four tasks at a glance
Two written assignments per part, four task types in total. Assignment One is always the short, 17% task and Assignment Two is always the long, 33% task — on Part One and Part Two alike.
| Part | Assignment | Task type | Subarea it comes from | Words | % of part | Suggested minutes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| One (103) | Assignment One | Work Product | I. Developing, Communicating, and Sustaining an Educational Vision | about 150–300 | ~17% | 35 |
| One (103) | Assignment Two | Case Study | II. Supervising Districtwide Change and Accountability | about 300–600 | ~33% | 75 |
| Two (104) | Assignment One | Management Problem Solving | II. Managing District Resources and Compliance | about 150–300 | ~17% | 35 |
| Two (104) | Assignment Two | Educational Program Analysis Multi-document |
I. Leading the District Educational Program | about 300–600 | ~33% | 75 |
Task types, subareas, word ranges and percentages are the official ones, from the NYSED / Evaluation Systems School District Leader Preparation Guide (© 2009–2010) directions for the written assignments. The percentages are the guide’s own “approximately.” The suggested minutes are ours, not official — the exam gives you one four-hour block and allocates nothing per task.
What “multi-document” means on 104
The official directions for Part Two say it plainly: “To view all parts of Assignment Two, you will need to click on buttons at the top of the screen labeled ‘Document 1,’ ‘Document 2,’ etc.” The official sample carries five documents — a memo, a test-results chart set, a newspaper article, a faculty experience and salary table, and a professional development schedule. If you write without clicking every tab, you are writing a partial answer to a task whose whole point is cross-document synthesis.
Order and review
Official: “You may complete the assignments in either order, and you may return to either assignment as time permits,” and “as with the multiple-choice questions, you may select written assignments for review later during the testing time.” So the four hours is one budget you control. There is a scroll bar — some assignments do not fit on one screen. Scroll to the bottom of the charge before you start counting obligations.
Official Part One sample assignments (PDF) Official Part Two sample assignments (PDF)
How SDL scoring actually works
Three criteria, one four-point scale, two non-scores. Learn the words, because the words are what the grader is holding.
| Criterion | Official wording, quoted exactly |
|---|---|
| PURPOSE | “Fulfill the charge of the assignment.” |
| APPLICATION OF CONTENT | “Accurately and effectively apply the relevant knowledge and skills.” |
| SUPPORT | “Support the response with appropriate examples and/or sound reasoning reflecting an understanding of the relevant knowledge and skills.” |
Official, from “Criteria for Scoring the Response,” NYSED / Evaluation Systems School District Leader Preparation Guide. The identical three criteria appear in the directions for the written assignments on both Part One and Part Two.
| Point | Score point description |
|---|---|
| 4 | “Reflects a thorough command of the relevant knowledge and skills.” Completely fulfills the purpose “by responding fully to the given task” · demonstrates “an accurate and highly effective application” · provides “strong support with high-quality, relevant examples and/or sound reasoning.” |
| 3 | “Reflects a general command.” Generally fulfills the purpose “by responding to the given task” · a “generally accurate and effective application” · support with “some relevant examples and/or generally sound reasoning.” |
| 2 | “Reflects a partial command.” Partially fulfills the purpose “by responding in a limited way to the given task” · a “limited, partially accurate and partially effective application” · “limited support with few examples and/or some flawed reasoning.” |
| 1 | “Reflects little or no command.” “Fails to fulfill the purpose” · a “largely inaccurate and/or ineffective application” · “little or no support … and/or seriously flawed reasoning.” |
| U | Unscorable. Official: a response “that is unrelated to the assigned topic, unreadable, written in a language other than English, or lacking a sufficient amount of original work to score” is unscorable. That last clause is the one that bites — a response stitched together out of sentences lifted from the prompt and the exhibits is not original work. |
| B | Blank. Official: “If there is no response to the assignment, then the response will be considered blank.” A blank 33% task cannot be recovered by anything you do on the other half of the test. |
Official, from the score scale printed in both the Part One and Part Two sample-assignment sections of the School District Leader Preparation Guide. Bolding is ours.
The practical translation — what a 4 does that a 3 does not
The score-point language is comparative and vague on purpose. Here is what the difference looks like on the page, criterion by criterion, read off the published models and their official evaluations.
| Criterion | A 3 looks like this | A 4 looks like this |
|---|---|---|
| PURPOSE | Every bullet of the charge is touched, but one of them is answered in a clause rather than a block. The prompt asked for three actions and the response argues two at length and mentions a third. A number is missed by one. | Every bullet has its own visible, countable block, in the prompt’s own order, and every stated number is hit exactly or over. Where the prompt says “and explain why,” the explanation is a separate sentence that begins with a because-word, so the grader cannot fail to find it. |
| APPLICATION OF CONTENT | Correct but generic district practice. “I would form a committee.” “I would improve communication.” “I would provide professional development.” Nothing in the sentence could only have been written by a superintendent. | The same idea carrying district machinery: who is on the committee, what its charge is, what data it uses, what policy-level product it delivers, and which office or body it reports to. The official models name the district governing body, BOCES, the district business leader, a districtwide protocol, a comprehensive needs assessment, mentoring with release time. Nothing there is exotic. It is just specified. |
| SUPPORT | Effectiveness is asserted. “This will be effective because it will improve student achievement.” The reason restates the goal instead of explaining a mechanism. | A causal chain plus a concrete instance. The official Educational Program Analysis model does both in one move: mentoring → supported teachers → skill development → visible student achievement → job satisfaction → lower turnover, and names what mentoring concretely involves (weekly meetings, reciprocal classroom observations, release time). |
Four skeletons, one per task type
Each block gives you the official charge (quoted, so you can count it), our response skeleton derived from that charge, and the practitioner frame circulating in preparation courses — with its errors marked. Always count from the prompt in front of you, never from a memorised frame. Prompts vary; the counts in the official samples are the counts in the official samples, not a guarantee.
Work Product
150–300 words · ~17% · Subarea IYou are given a district situation and told to produce a document — in the official sample, a memo to a stakeholder team you chair. The task type is named “Work Product” because the thing being scored is a real artefact a superintendent would actually send. There is an audience on the page. Write to it.
Official, NYSED / Evaluation Systems School District Leader Preparation Guide. Bolding ours.
What the frame gets right
- It splits the role bullet into develop and implement — a sharper reading of the charge than most candidates manage unprompted.
- It welds “It is important because” onto every issue, which is literally the second half of the second charge bullet.
- It counts. Two issues, two justifications, two role sentences.
Corrections
- “Copy from prompt” is dangerous advice. The official directions require “your original work, written in your own words, and not copied or paraphrased from some other work,” and a response “lacking a sufficient amount of original work to score” is unscorable. Restate the charge in your own words in one clause and move on.
- The frame has no audience and no document format. The task said write a memo to the members of the team. The official model opens with a Re: line and closes addressing the team. Neither costs you twenty words.
- The frame has no “at this time.” The charge asks why the plan matters now, which means a fact from the scenario has to appear in your first paragraph.
- No for-examples. The frame justifies but never illustrates, and the official evaluation of the strong response praises it for exactly that illustration.
Case Study
300–600 words · ~33% · Subarea IIA narrative of something a superintendent already did, usually badly by the end. You judge the past and then fix the future. The official prompt tells you the narrative is complete: “The case study provides information about all relevant activities that occurred in the situation described.” That sentence is permission — you are not expected to ask for more information, and “I would first gather more data” is a weak answer here in a way it would not be on an SBL task.
Official. Bolding ours.
Further corrections
- “List 2 to 3 things” undersells the strengths section. The published model gives four, and the evaluation counts all four. Where the prompt sets no number, generosity is free.
- The frame has no citation slot. The charge opens “citing specific examples from the information provided.” Every strength, every weakness and every action should be traceable to a named person, quotation or event in the case.
- “This action is effective because” understates it. The charge asks why each action is likely to be effective — a prediction with a mechanism, not a label.
- A bare list is not a description. The charge says describe and discuss. Write sentences.
Management Problem Solving
150–300 words · ~17% · Subarea IIAn operational failure — in the official sample, grant funds spent outside their purpose because nobody was monitoring grants district-wide. You are not asked to judge anyone and you are not asked for three actions. You are asked for two issues, one strategy, one justification. It is the narrowest charge of the four, and the easiest to over-answer.
Official. Bolding ours.
What the frame gets right
- The counts are correct — two issues, one strategy, one justification. This is the one frame that matches its official prompt numerically.
- “This strategy would be effective because” is almost word-for-word the official model’s closing sentence.
Corrections
- The “How …?” question format is not what this task’s official model does. The charge says describe two issues. The published strong response writes them as declaratives — “the need to create a comprehensive system of oversight and management,” “the need to provide all involved staff with training.” The question form is not forbidden in itself — the official Work Product model does phrase its two issues as questions — but there every question is immediately followed by why it matters and a for-example. A question on its own names a topic; it does not describe an issue. Writing the issue as a question and stopping is how a 4 becomes a 2 here.
- The frame gives one line per issue. “Describe” means the issue needs body — the official model gives each issue a full paragraph.
- Nothing prompts you outside the district. The official model reaches for BOCES and the district business leader, and the official evaluation specifically credits “knowledge of appropriate contacts related to this concept (e.g., BOCES).” On a New York district-leader exam, knowing who you can call is content knowledge.
Educational Program Analysis
300–600 words · ~33% · Subarea I · multi-documentThe heaviest task on either part: several documents behind tabs, and a charge with four bullets and eight obligations. It is also the most mechanical, which makes it the most rehearsable. The whole task is one strength and two weaknesses, each carrying a strategy, each strategy carrying a reason, every claim carrying a document number.
Official. Bolding ours.
What the frame gets right
- Its counts match the official charge exactly — one strength, one build-on strategy, two weaknesses, two strategies, two justifications.
- It captures the asymmetry candidates most often miss: one strength but two weaknesses. Writing two strengths is a symmetry reflex that costs you words and buys nothing.
Corrections
- No evidence slot. The charge’s first instruction is “citing specific evidence from the information provided,” and the published strong response puts a document number in parentheses in its first sentence and keeps doing it. A response with no document citations cannot earn a 4 on this task no matter how sensible its strategies are.
- It never justifies the build-on strategy. Add a because-clause there too.
- Its order splits weaknesses from their strategies. Keep each weakness with its own strategy and justification, as the official model does — weakness, strategy, why; weakness, strategy, why. The grader is looking for pairs.
- “Is effective” is the wrong tense and the wrong claim. The charge asks why it is likely to be effective in improving the district’s educational program. Land the reason on student learning, not on process satisfaction.
Worked examples — what the official strong responses actually did
Four official sample assignments, four official strong responses, four official evaluations. Below, each scenario is summarised and each strong response is broken down paragraph by paragraph against the three criteria. The full scenarios, the complete responses and the complete evaluations are in the free official PDFs — read them at least once in full before test day.
Work Product — the immigrant-family engagement plan
103 · Assignment One · ~335 words in the official model| Paragraph | What it does | Criterion it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Re: line “A plan for engaging immigrant families in our schools” |
Turns the answer into the document that was requested. Eight words. The charge said write a memo, and this is the cheapest possible proof that you noticed. | PURPOSE — and the audience discipline that runs through APPLICATION OF CONTENT. |
| Opening paragraph — why now | General principle first (“Parental participation in education is a critical aspect of children’s academic success”), then the district fact (a large immigrant student population), then the at-this-time argument built straight out of the scenario: “Some, but not all, district schools have already provided interpreters/translators and language tutors” — therefore a districtwide plan is what ensures needs are met “consistently and effectively.” | PURPOSE (bullet 1) · SUPPORT (sound reasoning) |
| Signpost line “Two key issues to consider when devising such a plan:” |
A one-line header. It tells the grader exactly where bullet 2 begins and announces the count. Free PURPOSE insurance. | PURPOSE |
| Issue one — what has worked | States the issue as a question (which strategies for disseminating information have been most effective?), then supplies the why and a concrete for example: if families who received notices in both their native language and English were more likely to attend school functions, translating more communications may be an effective first step districtwide. | PURPOSE (2a + 2b) · SUPPORT (example) |
| Issue two — what resources exist | Same shape. Data-gathering on financial parameters, community organisations and untapped resources, then a genuinely inventive example: surveying the school and business communities for employees’ proficiency in other languages to build a translator pool. | PURPOSE (2a + 2b) · APPLICATION OF CONTENT · SUPPORT |
| Role paragraph | Five distinct role actions, all of them things only the superintendent can do: facilitate the problem-solving process, promote consensus, present the plan to the school board and local community, ensure the ideas of immigrant families are incorporated, and identify and provide resources — “both for the team during the planning process and for staff during the implementation phase.” That last clause is where the develop-and-implement half of the charge gets satisfied, in eleven words. | PURPOSE (bullet 3, both halves) · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (governance, collaboration, resourcing) |
| Closing sentence | “By working together, we can support the involvement of immigrant families in their children’s education.” Addressed to the team, in the plural. It closes the document as a memo rather than trailing off as an essay. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT (communication with a stakeholder team) |
On APPLICATION OF CONTENT: the response “demonstrates knowledge of how to effectively communicate with a team of stakeholders in writing,” and shows “a plan to use consensus building and an understanding of the need to communicate information to the community and district governing body.”
On SUPPORT: “Both relevant examples and sound reasoning are present in this response,” naming the native-language notices and the local-business language proficiency as the examples.
Case Study — two middle schools, two cultures
103 · Assignment Two · ~630 words in the official model| Paragraph | What it does | Criterion it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| ¶1 — did well Four items |
(1) Made herself available to Mr. Kowalski and listened — “a superintendent’s accessibility and approachability to faculty members is a key element of successful employee management.” (2) Investigated before acting. (3) Met the principals individually, which let each speak candidly “without feeling the need to defend themselves to a peer.” (4) Showed commitment to academic excellence across all schools. Every item carries a reason. Four strengths where the practitioner frame would have offered two. | PURPOSE (bullet 1) · SUPPORT (reasoning attached to each judgement) |
| ¶2 — did poorly Where “should have” lives |
Two structural failures, not a list of complaints. First, she focused on building-level policy in the absence of district-level policy — “In the absence of established district-level procedures and expectations, personnel at each building had established their own,” so she “should have considered the value of creating and implementing new districtwide policies rather than targeting one building for change.” Second, she was impulsive and acted out of frustration in floating the principal swap, and “her approach to forcing change created a hostile situation.” | PURPOSE (bullet 2) · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (change management, district vs. building authority) |
| ¶3 — action one | Communicate with the district governing body about the need for districtwide professional development standards, expectations and policies. Why it works, three ways: secures governing-body support, signals to all stakeholders how seriously the superintendent takes staff development, and “may also help reduce the Leonard principal’s sense of being singled out for criticism.” That third clause is the one that reads as a real superintendent talking. | PURPOSE (bullet 3) · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (governance) · SUPPORT |
| ¶4 — action two | Issue a clarifying statement that the two principals stay where they are, plus a commitment to districtwide goals and policies, plus a brief outline of a districtwide stakeholder committee to write the professional development protocol. Why it works: dispels rumours, and the collaborative approach “could enhance problem solving, increase acceptance of change, and promote a general sense of commitment to the larger goal of student achievement.” Note that this action directly repairs the specific damage described in the last paragraph of the case. | PURPOSE · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (communication, change) · SUPPORT |
| ¶5 — action three | Once districtwide policy exists, require each principal to produce a building professional development plan aligned to it. Why it works: gives principals a way to demonstrate commitment, establishes accountability for results, and lets the superintendent monitor progress, ensure adherence and report to the governing body. It is sequenced — it cannot happen until action one has happened. Three actions that form a sequence read as a plan; three parallel actions read as a list. | PURPOSE · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (accountability) · SUPPORT |
On APPLICATION OF CONTENT: the response shows understanding of effective methods for addressing problems (“begin by gathering relevant information, promote stakeholder commitment to working toward solutions”) and for implementing change — explicitly, “recognizing that a top-down decision to change positions of principals is not an effective way to initiate change,” “recognizing the importance of involving stakeholders in the change process,” and “the value of establishing districtwide policies and procedures to facilitate change and help establish accountability.”
On SUPPORT: “Reasons are provided for the evaluation of the superintendent’s good and poor choices,” and it singles out the individual-meetings justification and the contents of the clarifying statement.
Management Problem Solving — the unmonitored grants
104 · Assignment One · ~340 words in the official model| Paragraph | What it does | Criterion it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| ¶1 — issue one | “The need to create a comprehensive system of oversight and management of the district’s entire grant system.” Then two operational specifics that turn a platitude into a design: a knowledgeable programme administrator heading it and a well-organised programme handbook given to every participating staff member. Declarative, not a question. Named, then specified. | PURPOSE (bullet 1a) · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (internal control) |
| ¶2 — issue two + the link back | “A second, related issue” — training for all involved staff, covering compliance with restrictions on specific funds and the importance of reporting requirements. Then the paragraph earns its keep by returning to the scenario: because the programme is popular and more than one principal is running several grants, errors like Mr. Haigh’s will recur without oversight plus systematic training. That sentence is the reasoning that makes both issues important rather than merely true. | PURPOSE (bullet 1b) · SUPPORT (reasoning tied to the facts given) |
| ¶3 — the one strategy | Ask the local BOCES director or assistant director to collaborate with the district business leader to build and run a series of training sessions — then three named sessions: purpose and intent of grant-funded initiatives (mandatory for all involved); management and compliance, with allowable expenditures, budget and object codes, and fiscal accounting; and reporting of funding use and outcomes, technical-assistance contacts, and documentation organised for the business leader and in case of an audit. One strategy, three components, real vocabulary. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT — this paragraph is where the 4 is won |
| ¶4 — why it works | Two reasons, of two different kinds. Capability: staff will have the information they need, including where to direct questions. Accountability and culture: it communicates that “compliance with system requirements is taken very seriously and that individuals who demonstrate noncompliance will be held accountable.” | PURPOSE (bullet 3) · SUPPORT |
On SUPPORT: “there is reasoning for providing a comprehensive system of management and training for personnel at all levels (i.e., to help prevent errors such as Mr. Haigh’s). Examples of components of training for grant compliance and management are provided (e.g., contacts for technical assistance, documentation for auditing).”
What to steal
- Nobody gets disciplined. Mr. Haigh admitted the error and offered to fix it; the response never proposes action against him. The charge was about building a system, and the response stays on the charge.
- BOCES. A single accurate New York structural reference — a Board of Cooperative Educational Services offering shared services a single district would struggle to staff — carried an entire sentence of the official evaluation.
- Object codes, allowable expenditures, audit documentation. Three phrases of genuine business-office vocabulary. This is what “highly effective application” looks like in practice.
The over-answer risk
This task tempts you into a list of five reforms: centralise grant applications, require pre-approval, hire a grants coordinator, restructure the business office, add an internal audit. All defensible; all outside the charge, which asked for one strategy. The word budget is 150–300. Spend it on describing one strategy in enough operational detail that the grader can see you have actually run one, and on the two-part reason at the end.
Educational Program Analysis — the Fowler middle schools
104 · Assignment Two · ~635 words in the official model · five documents| Move | What the official model does | Criterion it feeds |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | “Community, educator, and parent/guardian support and involvement (Documents #1 and #3)” — cited to two documents in its first sentence, then illustrated twice: staff openness to new transition strategies (Doc 1) and parents/guardians actively serving on the Study Committee (Doc 3). | PURPOSE · SUPPORT (evidence citation) |
| Build-on strategy | Expand the role of a body that already exists. The Middle School Study Committee has already used shared decision-making and data to identify problems; give it a broader mandate to explore, identify and implement solutions, grow its membership, and split it into subcommittees with named remits — teacher retention, professional development, meeting the needs of English language learners. Nothing new is invented. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT (shared decision-making, capacity) |
| Weakness one | High middle school teacher turnover and its likely effect on achievement (Documents #3 and #4), quantified: “Approximately half of the middle school staff have five or fewer years of experience” (Doc 4). The number is the claim. | PURPOSE · SUPPORT |
| Strategy one + why | A mentoring programme — and then it specifies: volunteer experienced middle school teachers paired with new ones for support, feedback and coaching, with administrator-provided release time, weekly mentor meetings and reciprocal classroom observations. The reason is a chain, not a label: mentoring targets specific teacher behaviours → affects student achievement and test scores → supported teachers who see students achieving are more successful and more satisfied → satisfaction reduces turnover. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT · SUPPORT (this is the model’s best paragraph) |
| Weakness two | Low grade 8 English achievement, quantified and contrasted: “consistent low performance (i.e., 71–78% passing) over a three-year period (Document #2) … lower than both statewide scores and scores of similar school districts. In contrast, the fourth-grade English scores are better than the scores of similar school districts during the same three-year period.” The contrast is what makes it a middle school programme weakness rather than a district-wide one. | PURPOSE · APPLICATION OF CONTENT (data interpretation) · SUPPORT |
| Strategy two + why | A comprehensive needs assessment of the middle school educational programme, run by the Study Committee or one like it, using state test data plus questionnaires and interviews, examining curriculum and instruction and also leadership, resources and climate. The justification runs longest of all: stakeholders + data → understanding of causes → a worked illustration (test data may show grade 8 struggled with particular concepts → examine whether the curriculum covers them, and how deeply) → decisions (textbook alignment to standards, professional development in research-based ELA strategies) → and finally “the effectiveness of plans for improvement can then be measured by analyzing future performance on state tests for eighth graders.” | APPLICATION OF CONTENT · SUPPORT |
On SUPPORT: “ample evidence of both sound reasoning and support through examples … including what an analysis of the state test data may reveal (e.g., inadequate coverage of curriculum concepts), how the analysis of results can be used to develop an improvement plan, and types of interactions required for a successful mentoring program (e.g., weekly meetings between new teachers and their mentors, classroom observations).”
Second: the model never mentions the salary column. Document 4 shows middle school teachers averaging $36,000 while high school teachers average $54,000 in the same district — the most arresting number on the page, and an obvious candidate explanation for why experienced teachers transfer out of the middle schools, which is exactly what the newspaper article reports. Published models are strong responses, not perfect ones. Read them as a floor.
The moves that earn points
Strip the four task types of their subject matter and the same small set of moves is left. Learn the chain, then learn the seven rules that surround it.
One flat declarative sentence. The issue is X. The strength is X. The first action is X. No preamble, no hedging, no sentence that has to be finished before the claim appears.
A reason welded to every single claim. … because ______, and for a strategy, … which would ______, which in turn ______. A mechanism, not a restatement of the goal.
The specific fact from the prompt that makes the claim true — a person, a quotation, a number, a document number. Both long tasks open their charge with the words citing specific.
In any action or strategy section, every verb points at the future. “Should have” belongs only where you are judging the past, which on this exam is one paragraph of one task type.
Failure modes
Specific, recurring ways SDL responses lose points — what each one looks like on the page, which criterion it costs, and the fix.
| Failure mode | What it looks like | Costs you | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retrospective actions The classic |
The action section reads “the superintendent should have consulted the principals before announcing the reassignment” and “she should have built consensus first.” Both are true. Neither is an action to take now. You have written the weakness section twice and answered the third bullet zero times. | PURPOSE, hard. On the Case Study that is a third of a 33% task. | Check the auxiliary verb in every sentence of the action section. Should have → should. Past perfect belongs in one paragraph and one paragraph only. |
| Wrong count | Two actions when three were asked for. Three strategies when one was asked for. Two strengths when the charge said one strength and two weaknesses. Usually the direct result of writing from a memorised template. | PURPOSE. Under-counting caps you; over-counting eats the word budget. | Write the required numbers on the notebooklet before typing. Signpost your paragraphs with First / Second / Finally so you can count them yourself in the review pass. |
| Naked assertions | “I would form a districtwide committee.” Full stop. Or the circular version: “This will be effective because it will improve student achievement.” The reason restates the goal instead of naming a mechanism. | SUPPORT, and APPLICATION OF CONTENT by association. | Every claim gets “because” and a chain of at least two links. Then a for example. If you cannot say why something works, you have chosen the wrong something. |
| Ignoring the exhibits | A perfectly sensible Educational Program Analysis with no document numbers in it, or a Case Study whose judgements never name Mr. Kowalski, the two principals, the test scores or the pre-meeting announcement. Generic good practice, unattached to this district. | SUPPORT and APPLICATION OF CONTENT. Both long charges begin citing specific. | Put a document number or a named fact in the first sentence of each claim, the way the official model does: “… support and involvement (Documents #1 and #3).” |
| School-level answer to a district-level prompt | Recommendations that a principal could execute alone: walkthroughs, a faculty meeting agenda, a grade-level team, a classroom coaching cycle. Or the reflex to fix the one bad building rather than the missing district policy. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT — this is the criterion that tests whether you understand the role. | Ask what only a superintendent can do here: policy, protocol, governing-body engagement, districtwide standards, resource allocation, cross-building structures, accountability for building plans. Then let principals do the building-level work aligned to what you set. |
| Long on Assignment One, short on Assignment Two | A 400-word Work Product and a 320-word Case Study — a great deal of care spent on 17% and thin coverage of 33%. It happens because the short task is easier and comes first. | PURPOSE on the task that matters twice as much. | Budget by weight, not by order: roughly 35 minutes on the short task and 75 on the long one, and consider writing the long one first. The official models land at the top of each range or slightly past it, never near the floor. |
| Wrong audience | Writing the Work Product memo as an essay about the district, in the third person, with no addressee — or the reverse, opening a Case Study analysis with “Dear Board of Education.” | PURPOSE and APPLICATION OF CONTENT (communication skill is an objective in its own right). | Reread the verb in the charge. Write a memo to the members of the team is an instruction about format and reader. Write a response is not. |
| Acting outside your authority | “I would terminate the principal.” “I would change the collective bargaining agreement.” “I would adopt the policy at the next board meeting.” The superintendent recommends; the board of education adopts policy and acts on personnel. Unilateral changes to terms and conditions of employment are negotiated, not announced. | APPLICATION OF CONTENT. In New York this reads as a governance error, not a bold choice. | Use the verbs that fit the role: recommend, present to the governing body, convene, charge, direct staff, allocate, require a plan, monitor, report. When a change touches employment terms, say you would engage the association and follow the agreement. |
| Copying the prompt | Opening sentences lifted verbatim from the scenario, or a response built mostly of quoted exhibit text with connective tissue. | Potentially unscorable — officially, a response “lacking a sufficient amount of original work to score.” | Quote sparingly and in quotation marks, as evidence. Everything else in your own words. This is an explicit instruction in the official directions, not an inference. |
| Solving a different problem | The Management Problem Solving charge asks how to build a system; the response investigates and disciplines the principal. The Educational Program Analysis charge asks about the educational programme; the response analyses the budget. | PURPOSE, and at the extreme, unscorable as “unrelated to the assigned topic.” | Reread the charge after drafting and tick each bullet against a paragraph. If a paragraph does not answer a bullet, it is costing you words you needed elsewhere. |
| Chasing the sympathetic character | Devoting the Case Study to whether Mr. Kowalski was treated fairly, or to which principal is the better leader. The narrative supplies a grievance and invites you to adjudicate it. | PURPOSE and APPLICATION OF CONTENT. | The complaint is the doorway, not the topic. Ask what the case is really about at district level — here, the absence of districtwide expectations — and answer that. |
| Leaving one blank | Running out of time and submitting nothing for one assignment. | Officially scored B, blank. On a 33% task this is generally unrecoverable. | Hard checkpoint: both assignments must have a complete draft before you go back to any flagged multiple-choice item. A rough 4-paragraph answer scores; an empty box does not. |
Two practice tasks, with model responses
Both of the tasks below are practitioner-written practice — ours, not NYSED’s and not Pearson’s. The scenarios, the model responses and the scoring commentary are all our own work, built to the official charge structures and scored against the official three criteria. They have never been reviewed by NYSED or Evaluation Systems, and no score they earn is an official score.
Case Study — two report cards, one district
300–600 words · 75 minutes · practitioner-writtenSubarea II — Supervising Districtwide Change and Accountability. Touches objectives on the process of change and its management, data-driven decision-making and problem solving, and promoting accountability.
Dr. Nadia Osei is in her second year as superintendent of the Harrow Falls Central School District, a district of about 2,600 students with three elementary schools, one middle school and one high school.
In September, the parent of a fourth grader emails Dr. Osei directly. The family moved between two of the district’s elementary schools over the summer, and the parent has discovered that the two schools use different report cards, different grading scales, and different criteria for recommending students for the district’s Grade 5 accelerated mathematics placement. Her child qualified at one school and did not qualify at the other.
Dr. Osei replies the same day and meets the parent that week. She then asks the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction to pull three years of Grade 4 and Grade 5 records from all three elementary schools. The records confirm the parent’s account: the three schools use three different report card formats, and Grade 5 accelerated mathematics placement rates range from 9 percent at one school to 27 percent at another, with no corresponding difference in state assessment results across the three schools. Dr. Osei meets each elementary principal individually. Each principal believes their school’s practice is the district’s practice. Neither board policy nor the district’s administrative regulations say anything about report card format, grading practice or placement criteria.
Dr. Osei brings the placement data to the board of education’s education committee, which asks her to address it.
At the October faculty conference at the school with the lowest placement rate, Dr. Osei tells the assembled staff that the district “will adopt a single K–5 report card and a single set of placement criteria, effective in January,” that the present situation is “indefensible,” and that the school’s principal “has been holding students back.” She names no committee and describes no process.
The following week the president of the Harrow Falls Teachers’ Association writes to Dr. Osei and to the board. The letter states that report card format and grading practice have been on the agenda of the district’s standing labor-management committee for two years, that the association was not consulted, and that a mid-year change would be pursued as a contractual matter. Two of the three elementary principals stop responding to the assistant superintendent’s requests for placement data. Board members begin receiving emails from parents at all three schools.
Model response at score point 4 — open only after you have written your own
Dr. Osei did several things well. First, she responded to the parent’s email the same day and met with her that week. A superintendent who is reachable learns about district problems early, and in this case a single family’s experience surfaced an inequity in placement that three years of records had not brought to anyone’s attention. Second, she converted an anecdote into evidence rather than acting on it, asking the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction for three years of Grade 4 and Grade 5 records from all three elementary schools. That step turned one complaint into a documented districtwide finding: placement rates ranging from 9 percent to 27 percent with no corresponding difference in state assessment results. Third, she met the three elementary principals individually, which allowed each to describe their own practice candidly rather than defensively, and produced the most important finding in the case — that each principal believed their practice was the district’s practice. Fourth, she brought the placement data to the board of education’s education committee before acting, informing the governing body of a significant equity issue and obtaining its support to address it.
Dr. Osei also made several serious errors. She announced a completed decision, at a single school’s faculty conference, to an audience that had no role in making it and no notice that it was coming. She should have brought a proposed process rather than a finished decision, and should have communicated it to all three schools at once so that no building could conclude it had been singled out. She also criticised a named principal in front of that principal’s own staff, which is a personnel matter conducted in public; it converted a districtwide policy problem into a personal accusation and predictably cost her the cooperation of the principals whose data she needs. She set a January effective date without consulting the teachers’ association, even though a standing labor-management committee had carried report card format and grading practice on its agenda for two years and was available to her. Most fundamentally, she failed to act on her own finding. Her investigation established that neither board policy nor administrative regulation addressed reporting or placement criteria; the correct response to a policy vacuum is a policy, not an announcement.
Dr. Osei should take three actions. First, she should issue a written communication to all district staff, to the association president and to families at all three elementary schools stating that no reporting or placement change will take effect in January, that the district will develop common K–5 reporting and Grade 5 mathematics placement criteria for the following September through a defined process, and that the variation the data revealed is a district responsibility rather than any one school’s or principal’s failing. This is likely to be effective because it removes the mid-year deadline that triggered the contractual objection, replaces rumour with a single accurate account for every audience at once, and restores the standing of the principal she criticised publicly — which is the practical precondition for getting the placement data flowing again.
Second, she should recommend that the board of education adopt a policy establishing common districtwide expectations for elementary reporting to parents and guardians and for the criteria used in course and programme placement, and charge the superintendent with developing the implementing regulation. This is likely to be effective because the cause of the disparity is the absence of any such policy: three schools wrote their own rules because the district never wrote any. A board-adopted policy makes the expectation the district’s rather than the superintendent’s, gives principals a common instrument instead of a personal instruction, and outlasts any individual administrator.
Finally, once the board has acted, she should convene a K–5 reporting and placement committee — the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, all three elementary principals, teachers from each school identified in consultation with the association, and parent representatives — charged with recommending a common report card and a common, evidence-based placement rubric for the following September, with any element affecting terms and conditions of employment routed through the existing labor-management committee, and with placement rates by school reported annually to the board. This is likely to be effective because it puts the people who built three different practices in the same room to build one, which is what secures implementation; because using the labor-management structure that already exists answers the association’s objection procedurally rather than adversarially; and because annual reporting of placement rates builds in the accountability that was missing, so the next disparity is found by the district’s own monitoring rather than by a family that happens to move.
About 600 words.
Why this would score a 4 — criterion by criterion
| Criterion | What earns it here |
|---|---|
| PURPOSE | All three bullets have their own blocks, in the charge’s order. Four things done well, signposted First / Second / Third / Fourth. Four things done poorly. Exactly three actions, signposted First / Second / Finally, each with its own explicit “likely to be effective because” clause so the fourth obligation cannot be missed. Every action is prospective; the only “should have” appears in the weakness paragraph, where it belongs. |
| APPLICATION OF CONTENT | The diagnosis is district-level: an absent policy, not a bad principal. The remedies use the instruments a superintendent actually holds — a districtwide communication, a policy recommended to the board, an implementing regulation, a chartered committee, an annual monitoring report. It respects the boundary of the role: it does not fire anyone, does not amend an agreement unilaterally, and routes anything touching terms and conditions of employment through the existing labor-management committee. And the three actions are sequenced — the committee is convened “once the board has acted” — which reads as a change plan rather than a list. |
| SUPPORT | Every judgement carries a reason, and the reasons are mechanisms rather than restated goals: individual meetings produced candour and therefore the key finding; the public criticism cost her access to the data; removing the January date removes the trigger for the contractual objection. Specific evidence from the case appears throughout — the 9-to-27 percent placement range, the absence of any corresponding difference in state assessment results, the two-year-old labor-management committee agenda, the two principals who stopped responding. |
Educational Program Analysis — five documents from an elementary district
300–600 words · 75 minutes · practitioner-written · multi-documentSubarea I — Leading the District Educational Program. Touches objectives on understanding and supporting learning throughout the district, standards and expectations, and support to students. The documents are adapted from a practitioner-written district case study; the charge, the analysis and the model response are ours.
You are the new superintendent of a suburban K–12 district of approximately 3,000 students, educated in five elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school. In January, at a public meeting, the board president directed your predecessor to reduce the expense side of the budget by $1 million. Your predecessor and the assistant superintendent for business concluded that closing one elementary school was the only reduction of that size available, and prepared the material below. You have arrived in the middle of the resulting dispute, and the board has asked you for an analysis of the district’s educational programme. Read all five documents.
| School | Enrolment | Capacity | % utilisation | ELA % at Levels 3–4 | ELA % at Levels 1–2 | Math % at Levels 3–4 | Math % at Levels 1–2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School 1 | 310 | 420 | 74 | 73 | 27 | 74 | 26 |
| School 2 | 280 | 340 | 82 | 62 | 38 | 70 | 30 |
| School 3 | 400 | 510 | 78 | 87 | 13 | 80 | 20 |
| School 4 | 330 | 410 | 80 | 83 | 17 | 84 | 16 |
| School 5 | 200 | 300 | 67 | 77 | 23 | 79 | 21 |
| District | 1,520 | 1,980 | 77 | 77 | 23 | 77 | 23 |
| School | White | Black | Hispanic | Asian | Native American |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| School 1 | 43% | 25% | 27% | 5% | — |
| School 2 | 39% | 31% | 29% | 1% | — |
| School 3 | 51% | 19% | 21% | 9% | — |
| School 4 | 29% | 29% | 32% | 9% | 1% |
| School 5 | 32% | 29% | 28% | 11% | — |
| District | 39% | 27% | 27% | 7% | — |
Also supplied: a cost analysis showing that closing one elementary school would save approximately $1.1 million — $280,000 operations, $720,000 staffing, $100,000 supplies and materials.
Document 2 — Memorandum, superintendent to board president (February 15)
Lists the factors to consider in closing a school: condition of buildings, location, safety of children travelling to and from school, ethnicity of the student population after consolidation, and academic performance. Explains each chart. On academic performance, states only: “Be aware that by closing a building there will be a potential negative impact on academic performance as you put more children in the other buildings.” Proposes a closed-door session in two weeks. States no programme goal and no instructional plan.
Document 3 — Parents Council letter (March 1)
Opposes closing any elementary school. Cites a “long history of academic and social emotional success in meeting the needs of every child” and “the individualized attention provided our children in every school,” and specifically names the fine arts, music, physical education, drama and other enrichment programmes. Warns of overcrowding. Asks the board to consider alternatives such as phased expenditure freezes. Closes: “We stand ready to discuss this most pressing issue.”
Document 4 — Teachers’ Association letter (March 15)
Opposes closing any elementary school. Argues that consolidation would raise class sizes and reduce “the personalization and individualization that characterizes” the district. Offers to meet “to establish a dialogue for developing budget alternatives,” and suggests reducing the number of administrators instead.
Document 5 — Board of Education minutes, April public meeting
Parents spoke against the closure and against reductions in instructional services in the remaining schools. Minutes record that the superintendent had told families at a recent presentation that “it would be necessary to reduce supplementary services in order to provide time for mandated state requirements.” Parents said they had fought to obtain those enrichment programmes and called the change “a step backwards.” The board president responded that the board must align the budget with the state property tax cap and community sentiment while still preparing students to perform well on state assessments.
Model response at score point 4 — open only after you have written your own
One significant strength of the district’s educational programme is that it already produces strong overall elementary results and contains internal proof of the practices that produce them. Districtwide, 77 percent of elementary students score at Level 3 or above in both English language arts and mathematics, and Schools 3 and 4 reach 87 and 83 percent in English language arts and 80 and 84 percent in mathematics (Document 1). That strength is matched by an unusually organised community: both the Parents Council and the Teachers’ Association put their positions in writing and both explicitly offered to meet and to help develop alternatives (Documents 3 and 4).
One strategy for building on this strength is to charter a standing Elementary Program Council, convened by the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction and including the parent and teacher representatives both groups have already volunteered, with a defined first product: documenting the scheduling, core instruction and intervention practices in place at Schools 3 and 4 and spreading them through cross-school instructional rounds and common planning time for grade-level teams. This is likely to be effective because the strongest professional learning available to this district costs nothing and is already inside it — practice in its own two highest-performing buildings, operating under the same calendar, contract and curriculum — and because it converts two organised groups from opponents of a budget action into participants in a programme improvement with a visible product.
One significant weakness is that student achievement varies sharply from building to building and the variation is not explained by student demographics. School 2 has 38 percent of students below proficiency in English language arts and 30 percent in mathematics, against School 4’s 17 and 16 percent — a 21-point gap between two schools in the same district — while School 4’s combined Black and Hispanic enrolment, at 61 percent, is slightly higher than School 2’s 60 percent (Document 1). Whatever produces School 2’s results is a programme variable, not a student variable, and the district has not asked which one.
To address this, the district should commission a programme review of School 2, led by the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction with the principal as a full partner and with reviewers drawn from Schools 3 and 4: an audit of protected instructional minutes for English language arts and mathematics in the master schedule, a review of core curriculum implementation and materials against the two higher-performing schools, calibrated walkthroughs using a common observation tool, and an analysis of which students are below proficiency and what intervention they receive. The review would produce a written improvement plan with quarterly benchmarks reported to the board. This is likely to be effective because it tests the demographic assumption rather than accepting it, and because it concentrates scarce resources in the one building the data identifies rather than spreading a districtwide initiative across four schools that do not need one. Drawing reviewers from Schools 3 and 4 means the review produces transferable practice and not only a verdict, and progress can be measured on the same assessment that identified the problem.
A second significant weakness is that programme decisions in this district are being driven by budget arithmetic with no instructional analysis anywhere in the record. The superintendent’s memorandum treats academic performance solely as a risk of consolidation and states no programme goal (Document 2). Families were told that supplementary services would be reduced “in order to provide time for mandated state requirements” — a curricular decision, announced with no analysis of what those services contribute (Document 5). Both the Parents Council and the Teachers’ Association identify loss of enrichment and individualisation as their central objection (Documents 3 and 4). The district has no visible mechanism for evaluating the instructional effect of a resource decision.
To address this, the district should require a written programme-effect analysis, prepared by the curriculum office, for every budget reduction option before it reaches the board — identifying which students and which programmes are affected, what participation and outcome data exist for each, and what would be done to protect the affected outcomes — supported by an inventory of all supplementary and enrichment programmes with enrolment and outcome data, completed before any of them is reduced. This is likely to be effective because it forces every cost decision to be tested against student outcomes rather than only against dollars per building, which is precisely what both constituent letters are asking for; because it gives the board a documented, defensible record in a decision that will be contested whichever option it chooses; and because it produces something the district currently lacks and will need in every budget cycle — evidence about which of its supplementary programmes are worth protecting.
About 640 words — the same modest overrun the official models carry.
Why this would score a 4 — criterion by criterion
| Criterion | What earns it here |
|---|---|
| PURPOSE | All eight obligations, in the charge’s order, each in its own paragraph: one strength (not two), a build-on strategy, two weaknesses of genuinely different kinds — one about outcomes, one about process — a strategy for each, and a “likely to be effective because” clause for all three strategies, including the build-on strategy the charge left ambiguous. Every claim carries a document citation, satisfying the “citing specific evidence” instruction that opens the charge. |
| APPLICATION OF CONTENT | The data interpretation is the load-bearing move: it puts the achievement table and the enrolment table side by side and shows that the district’s two most demographically similar schools produce a 21-point gap, which converts an assumption into a testable programme question. The remedies are district-level and role-appropriate — chartering a council, commissioning a programme review, requiring an analysis before a board decision, reporting benchmarks to the board — and none of them requires authority the superintendent does not have. The response also stays inside the charge: it is asked about the educational programme and it never argues for or against closing a school. |
| SUPPORT | Specific numbers throughout (77 percent districtwide, 38 versus 17, 61 versus 60 percent), quotations from Documents 2 and 5, and reasoning that runs as chains rather than labels: reviewers from high-performing schools → transferable practice, not just a verdict; programme-effect analysis → a defensible record → opposition converted into participation. It also names the measure by which each strategy could be judged, which is the cheapest strong finish available on this task. |
A timing plan for the four hours
Each part gives you four hours of testing time for 60 selected-response items and 2 written assignments, plus a separate 15 minutes for the computer-based testing tutorial and the nondisclosure agreement, which is not part of your four hours. Everything below is our recommendation, not an official allocation — the test allocates nothing per section.
| Clock | Mins | What you are doing | Why here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0:00–0:04 | 4 | Open both written assignments and read only the charges. Scroll to the bottom of each — some do not fit one screen. On Part Two, click every Document tab so you know how many there are. Write on your notebooklet: the task type, the word range, and the required counts for each assignment. | Four minutes spent here is what prevents the two-actions-for-three error. It also lets the prompts sit in the back of your mind while you do multiple choice — you will notice items that hand you vocabulary. |
| 0:04–1:26 | 82 | All 60 selected-response items, about 80 seconds each. Leave nothing unanswered — an item left blank cannot score. Flag anything that takes more than 90 seconds and move on. Do not return to flagged items yet. | Multiple choice is the part of the test where speed is safe: your first instinct on a district-leadership item is usually right, and the marginal minute is worth far more inside a 33% essay. |
| 1:26–1:30 | 4 | Reset. Look away from the screen. Reread the charge of Assignment Two and your written counts. | You are about to spend 75 minutes on a third of your score. Enter it deliberately. |
| 1:30–2:45 | 75 | Assignment Two — the long, 33% task. Case Study on 103, Educational Program Analysis on 104. Budget it internally: 12 minutes reading the case or all the documents and noting evidence, 8 minutes outlining paragraph by paragraph against the charge, 45 minutes drafting, 10 minutes revising. | The long task gets the fresh brain and the biggest block, because it is worth twice the short one and because it is the one that needs sustained structure. On Part Two it also has five documents to read. |
| 2:45–3:20 | 35 | Assignment One — the short, 17% task. Work Product on 103, Management Problem Solving on 104. Budget: 5 minutes planning, 22 minutes drafting, 8 minutes revising. Stop at 300–340 words. | The short task has a narrow charge and a rehearsable shape. It does not need an hour, and giving it one is the most common way candidates end up thin on the task worth twice as much. |
| 3:20–3:45 | 25 | Flagged selected-response items. Work through them; guess and confirm on anything still unresolved so that no item is left unanswered. | This is the only work on the test that is safely deferrable, so it is what absorbs whatever time the writing actually took. |
| 3:45–4:00 | 15 | The charge audit. Reread each charge bullet and physically point at the paragraph that answers it. Count your actions, issues, strengths, weaknesses and justifications against the numbers on your notebooklet. Check that every verb in every action section faces forward. Check your name appears nowhere in either answer box. | This pass recovers more points per minute than anything else you can do at the end — a missing count or a stray “should have” is a two-minute fix worth a whole score point. |
Practitioner-recommended, not official. Testing time and the separate 15 minutes for tutorial and nondisclosure agreement are official; the internal allocation is ours.
The alternative order — write first
If you know that your writing degrades badly when tired, invert it: charges at 0:00, Assignment Two 0:05–1:20, Assignment One 1:20–1:55, then 60 items 1:55–3:25, then a combined review to 4:00. The official directions confirm you may complete the assignments in either order and return to either as time permits. The risk of writing first is that an essay expands to fill whatever time is available and you arrive at the multiple-choice section with 70 minutes for 60 items. If you take this route, the 1:20 and 1:55 checkpoints are not negotiable.
If you are testing both parts in one appointment
Booking Part One and Part Two together is a single appointment of about eight hours and forty minutes, including a 40-minute lunch break between them. That means four constructed responses in one day, two of them 300–600 words. Rehearse at least one full four-hour part end to end before doing that; the failure mode is not knowledge, it is the fourth essay. There is no fee penalty for splitting them: Part One is $169 and Part Two is $168, and the Both Parts fee is $337 — exactly the sum. Each part is scored separately either way.
The four-week rehearsal
You cannot cram a constructed response. You can rehearse one until its shape is automatic, which is the whole point — on test day the structure should cost you no thought at all.
- Week one — read the official material end to end. Both sample-assignment PDFs, all four sample assignments, all four strong responses, all four evaluations, and the score scale. Read the evaluations twice. They are the only place anyone tells you, in the scorers’ own words, what was worth credit.
- Week two — write the four official samples under time, closed-book, at 35 and 75 minutes. Then put your response beside the official one and mark the differences: what did the model count that you did not; where did the model attach a reason and you asserted; where did the model cite a document and you generalised.
- Week three — drill the counts. Take any charge, official or practice, and do nothing but the three-minute planning step: read the bullets, write the required numbers, sketch the paragraph labels. Do ten of them. The counting error is the most expensive and the most preventable failure on this exam, and it is prevented entirely in the first three minutes.
- Week four — one full four-hour simulation per part, in one sitting, with a real 60-item set and both written tasks, on the timing plan above. Score yourself against the three criteria, not against a feeling. Then fix the one structural habit that cost you the most.