The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the efficacy of formulaic writing such as the five-paragraph theme (FPT) or essay for the purpose of earning high scores on high-stakes writing assessments. This qualitative descriptive study analyzed more than 1000 essays from Delaware Grade 8 and 10 writers, written for a statewide…

The Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) is designed to assess progress toward the Delaware Content Standards. Every year a certain number of items are removed from the test and then selected for public release. This booklet contains multiple-choice and short-answer (constructed response) items released from the 2000 or 2001 administration of…

This report, submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, contains summary details of Delaware students' growth in the areas of reading, mathematics, writing, science and social studies. The results reported herein are part of a long-term effort to gather data on Delaware students' educational progress and use the data to inform decisions about…