^Not really. If there are some unclear semantics on a question, and the answer given to the question is correct for a certain interpretation of the question, then the teacher usually gives credit for that answer. Some teachers are intentionally terse, but they're just as big of idiots as their students (and much larger assholes).
...except in situations where the teacher has no latitude in grading (like the aforementioned state testing.)
A good example:
A few years back, there was a reading passage on the state test for my grade. The first line of it was something like "The sun was setting as all of the little frogs gathered around to hear Grandfather Frog. This is the story he told."
The entire remainder of the passage was a first-person narrative by Grandfather Frog. One of the questions was "What point of view is this story told from?"
In my opinion, this is the
quintessential crappy question. It tells you
nothing about whether the student knows the difference between first, second, and third person; what it measures is whether the student was able to second-guess the test designer and figure out whether that person's line of reasoning was, "The first sentence frames the narrative, so it's third person" or "The narrative itself is first person."
When a classroom full of English teachers can't come to consensus on what the right answer is, there's a serious problem with asking that question to a seventh grader.
Poll