CAASPP Grade 8 ELA - Performance Task

Last updated about 1 month ago

3 questions

Source #1
The following article is from the New York Times, published on April 7, 2012.

Penny Wise, or 2.4 Cents Foolish?
by Jeff Sommer

The news from north of the border is both trivial and unsettling: they won't be making shiny new pennies in Canada anymore.

The government in Ottawa has made this decision after years of deliberation1, for reasons that would seem to apply equally well in the United States.

"Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home," Jim Flaherty, the Canadian finance minister2 said in a speech last month. A persuasive government brochure put it this way: "We often store them in jars, throw them away in water fountains, or refuse them as change."

Pennies cost more to produce than they are worth. [T]hey are worth so little that many Canadians don't bother to use them at all...

Do we really need pennies?

The Canadian government doesn't think so. By the fall, it plans to stop minting them and stop distributing them through banks. It won't actually ban them, though. Some people have grown so attached to pennies -a penny saved is a penny earned, after all-that they may want to keep using them indefinitely, and they can, the Canadian government says.

But those who can bear to part with their pennies are being encouraged to bring them to banks for eventual melting or to donate them to charities-which will presumably bring them in for melting. Electronic transactions will continue to include cents, while retail sales will be rounded up or down.

Inflation3 is sometimes cited as a threat whenever small coins are phased out. A $2.01 cup of coffee should be rounded down to $2, while $2.03 should become $2.05, for example, but retailers in the real world might raise prices more than lower them. That could cause a small, one-time inflation burst, says François Velde, an expert on the history of small change. ...

"But in a competitive market, you might well see price decreases," says Mr. Velde, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago who is working this year at the Bank of France. "In a place like New York, a 99-cent price of pizza might go down to 95 cents rather than $1 to avoid crossing that higher price threshold." Over all and over time, there should be no net price effect, he says.

He finds the argument for phasing out the penny to be at least as strong in the United States as in Canada because the two nations' small coins, political history and socioeconomic culture have so much in common. "That's what makes the Canadian decision a little unsettling," he says. "Their pennies even look a lot like ours."

In the United States, the mint says, each zinc and copper coin costs 2.41 cents to produce and distribute. It costs 1.6 Canadian cents to make a penny at the mint in Winnipeg, according to Canadian government figures. (A Canadian cent is worth about 0.99 cents at the current exchange rate.) "From the standpoint of economics, that's just a total waste of money," Mr. Velde says.

Pennies may not be big money, even if you add them together. But we are paying a cost for the privilege of squirreling them away in drawers and on dressers. The United States government-that is, taxpayers-lost $60.2 million on the production and distribution of pennies in the 2011 fiscal year, the mint's budget shows, and the losses have been mounting: $27.4 million in 2010, and $19.8 million in 2009.

A number of countries, including Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain, have already dropped their lowest-denominated coins, without dire consequences.

What is to be done in the United States? The mint defers to Congress, and Congress hasn't told it to abolish the penny. Lawmakers have directed the mint to study ways to make small coins more cheaply. Mike White, a spokesman for the mint, says a report will be completed in December. ...

At the very least, a change in the composition of the American penny seems likely.

In 1982, Congress authorized the Treasury to make such a change, and it did. Before then, pennies were 95 percent copper and 5 percent zinc. ... Pennies manufactured since have been copper-plated zinc, with zinc making up 97.5 percent of the coin and copper only 2.5 percent. Steel, which was used in pennies in World War II, could be substituted next.

But why stop at the penny? It's not the only American coin that costs more than it's worth. Each nickel costs 11.18 cents to produce and distribute, the mint says, at a loss to taxpayers of $56.5 million in the last fiscal year. In its 2013 budget proposal, the Obama administration has asked for authority to alter the composition of the nickel, too. ...

"The whole situation is ridiculous," Mr. Velde says. "... The serious, simple solution is to do away with the penny."

A penny for your thoughts?

1deliberation: discussion or debate
2Canadian finance minister: responsible for presenting the Canadian government's budget each year and helping to determine the funding levels for government departments
3Inflation: causing prices to increase

Sommer, J. (2012, April 7). Penny Wise, or 2.4 Cents Foolish? New York Times. Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/your-money/canada-drops-the-penny-but-will-the-us.html?_r=0

Source #4 describes how some people want to eliminate the penny from the United States' economy. Explain how the information in Source #2 adds to the reader's understanding of the potential effects of eliminating pennies in the United States. Give two details from Source #2 to support your explanation.

Key Elements:
Source #2 (Is the Penny Worth It?)
The U.S. Department of Defense stopped using the penny on foreign military bases over 30 years ago because pennies are "too heavy and are not cost-effective to ship."
The foreign military bases use a pricing system that rounds transactions to the nearest 5-cents, and that rounding system seems to work well.
Some fear that rounding will cost more for customers because of rising prices. Mark Weller says the "rounding tax" will cost consumers $600 million per year.
Dr. Whaples study says that over $700 million is wasted per year in the United States through the time it takes retail clerks and customers to count pennies.
Many argue that price rounding cannot be done fairly, so finding a cheaper way to make pennies is a better option for cutting the costs of the penny. One option for cutting costs is by using steel to make pennies like was done during World War II.

Required

Look at the claims in the table. Decide if the information in Source #3, Source #4, both sources, or neither source supports each claim. Click on the box that identifies the source that supports each claim. There will be only one box selected for each claim.

	Source #3: Give a Penny—Save the Day!	Source #4: The Ever-Changing Penny	Both	Neither
The penny has more value than what it can buy.
Rounding price totals will cause an increase in prices.
The low value of a penny is a good thing.
Changing the metals in the penny is a possible solution for people who want to keep the penny.

Required

Part 2
You will now review your notes and sources, and plan, draft, revise, and edit your writing. You may use your notes and refer to the sources. Now read your assignment and the information about how your writing will be scored; then begin your work.

Your Assignment:
As a contribution to the website your history class is creating, you decide to write an argumentative essay that addresses the issues surrounding the penny. Your essay will be displayed on the website and will be read by students, teachers, and parents who visit the website.
Your assignment is to use the research sources to write a multi-paragraph argumentative essay either for or against the continued production of the penny in the United States. Make sure you establish an argumentative claim, address potential counterarguments, and support your claim from the sources you have read. Develop your ideas clearly and use your own words, except when quoting directly from the sources. Be sure to reference the sources by title or number when using details or facts directly from the sources.

Argumentative Essay Scoring:
Your argumentative essay will be scored using the following:
Organization/purpose: How well did you state your claim, address opposing claims, and maintain your claim with a logical progression of ideas from beginning to end? How well did your ideas thoughtfully flow from beginning to end using effective transitions? How effective was your introduction and your conclusion?
Evidence/elaboration: How well did you integrate relevant and specific information from the sources? How well did you elaborate your ideas? How well did you clearly state ideas in your own words using precise language that is appropriate for your audience and purpose? How well did you reference the sources you used by title or number?
Conventions: How well did you follow the rules of grammar usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling?
Now begin work on your argumentative essay. Manage your time carefully so that you can
plan your multi-paragraph argumentative essay.
write your multi-paragraph argumentative essay.
revise and edit the final draft of your multi-paragraph argumentative essay.
Word-processing tools and spell check are available to you.

For Part 2, you are being asked to write a multi-paragraph argumentative essay, so please be as thorough as possible. Type your response in the space provided. The box will expand as you type.

Remember to check your notes and your prewriting/planning as you write and then revise and edit your argumentative essay.