California CAASPPGrades 3–8 · 11Smarter Balanced performance task
CAASPP writing practice, built like the real test.
California’s CAASPP ELA test is the Smarter Balanced assessment, and its writing task is the performance task full write. Generate complete practice tasks with the exact criteria language from released practice tests, sources students can cite, the official rubric, and an exemplar. When students finish, EnlightenAI grades every response against the same official rubric in minutes.
Pick a grade and writing purpose, choose a topic, and generate the full task: Part 1 scenario, two sources, and the Part 2 assignment with the official criteria checklist.
CAASPP performance task builderFree tool · no sign-in
1. GradeGrade 42. Purposeinformational3. TopicWhat it takes to become …4. GenerateFull performance task
Choose a topic
Pick a curated topic or write your own. Opinion and argumentative topics are screened so both sides have citable evidence in the sources.
Directions and criteria are verbatim from the released Grade 4 “Animals and Their Surroundings Informational Performance Task”.
02 Why generated
Why use generated CAASPP practice tests?
Released questions are the official gold standard, and every task here is anchored to them. But states release only a handful, and students eventually know them. Generated practice tests keep the exact format and scoring while giving students fresh practice questions all year.
Released performance tasks
Official items, the anchor for everything on this page
Same task structure, directions, and official rubric
Built for ongoing exam prep, not one mock test
03 Scoring
Scored with the official CAASPP and Smarter Balanced writing rubrics.
California scores the full write on the Smarter Balanced rubrics. Every descriptor, word for word, in the rubrics library, plus the consortium-wide details on the SBAC page.
The CAASPP ELA summative is the Smarter Balanced assessment as California administers it. The performance task ends with a full write: grades 3 to 5 write narrative, informational, or opinion pieces; grades 6 to 8 write narrative, explanatory, or argumentative pieces; grade 11 writes explanatory or argumentative essays.
How is CAASPP writing scored?
On the official Smarter Balanced rubric for the writing purpose: Organization/Purpose (1 to 4), Evidence/Elaboration or Development/Elaboration (1 to 4), and Conventions (0 to 2). The full rubrics, word for word, are in the EnlightenAI rubrics library.
When is the CAASPP administered?
Each California LEA schedules testing within the CDE spring administration period; there is no single fixed statewide date range. Confirm your district dates against the CAASPP assessment calendar.
Where can I find official CAASPP practice tests?
The CDE and CAASPP program publish practice and training tests through the CAASPP portal, and Smarter Balanced publishes performance task scoring guides with annotated student responses at portal.smarterbalanced.org.
Can AI grade CAASPP writing?
Yes. EnlightenAI trains on the official CAASPP rubric and scores each response with per-criterion feedback. In accuracy studies, EnlightenAI plus a teacher agreed with expert scores more closely than two teachers agreed with each other. See the CAASPP writing grader and the accuracy research.
Is this CAASPP practice test generator free?
Yes. Generating performance tasks is free and requires no sign-in. Grading responses against the rubric in EnlightenAI takes a free account.
05 After the practice
Why teachers use AI grading after CAASPP practice tests.
Generating the practice is the easy half. Grading thirty essays against the official rubric is where the weekend goes. EnlightenAI scores responses against the same rubric with per-criterion feedback, so practice becomes a feedback loop instead of a grading backlog.
0.77 QWK with teachers
In a study with DREAM Charter Schools, EnlightenAI plus a teacher scored 0.77 quadratic weighted kappa agreement, versus 0.52 for two teachers scoring independently.
70% exact score match
On the New York Regents dataset, EnlightenAI matched the training teacher’s exact score 70% of the time, and landed within one point the rest of the time.
From a real classroom
“Grading, once my most dreaded task, became faster and far more efficient. With EnlightenAI handling the bulk of the grading, I was free to focus on what mattered most: meaningful instruction with my students.” Melynda Brown, 6th Grade Humanities, Delta Schools
Train EnlightenAI on the official CAASPP rubric, then grade every practice response with per-criterion feedback. What used to take a weekend now takes a single class period.
