College faculty faces decisions about how to provide feedback on written work. We compared the quality of student writing and student impressions of feedback from both full and minimal markup methods. There was only one significant difference in the quality of writing or content between full and minimal markup. Students scored the functionality of…

Educators play an important role in ensuring that students attain the necessary strategic actions to become skilled writers. Studies have indicated that teachers need to consistently embed a larger range of evidence-based writing practices in their instruction to help their students improve the overall quantity and quality of their writing. The…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has led many U.S. states to incorporate on-demand writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. We argue this creates political and pedagogical tensions for teachers to navigate. We discuss how rubric conceptualization (1) is a process wherein a teacher iteratively (co-)constructs…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has recently led many U.S. states to incorporate text-based writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. This creates political and pedagogical tensions that teachers must navigate in their classroom use of writing rubrics. While prior research has focused on rubric design and/or the…

A recent (2015) study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Managers concluded that nearly half of US employers, across industries, believe recent college graduates to be lacking in requisite competencies for communication, broadly, and writing, in particular. This paper describes an advanced writing course in public relations that seeks to…

Drawing upon archival materials, I describe the history, design, and assessment of literacy tests from early 20th century New York state. Practitioners working with these early standardized writing tests grappled with tensions created by public Nativist sentiment, the legislation of "literacy," and calls to score the tests in…

By 2013, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had adopted college- and career-ready standards in English language arts and mathematics, placing a greater emphasis on argument writing to prepare students for life after high school. Solving the specific problem of how to help teachers teach to new standards for argument writing as well as the…

One of the most challenging aspects of the teaching profession, at all levels, is to identify and illuminate assumptions--one's students' and one's own. This article describes how three members of the Hudson Valley Writing Project (HVWP) at the State University of New York (SUNY) at New Paltz worked closely with the National Writing Project's…

Writing is an essential skill for participating in modern American society. Although it is crucial to careers and civic engagement, student writing falls far short of national expectations (College Board, 2004; NCES, 2012; Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) seek to increase the rigor of writing instruction…

This article explores the processes of writing in science and in particular the "complex performance" of writing a scientific argument. The article explores in general terms the nature of scientific argumentation in which the author-scientist makes claims, provides evidence to support these claims, and develops chains of scientific…

Despite the high stakes attached to students' performance on assessments of academic writing, we still know little about the challenges students face when composing in academic contexts. To begin to address this problem, two studies were designed with the following aims: to identify and describe the most prevalent types of academic writing at the…

Automated scoring has the potential to dramatically reduce the time and costs associated with the assessment of complex skills such as writing, but its use must be validated against a variety of criteria for it to be accepted by test users and stakeholders. This study addresses two validity-related issues regarding the use of e-rater® with the…

In the May 2009 issue of "English Journal", we reported on our analysis of data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress to provide a first look at changes in the teaching of writing over the past 30 years. In this article, we provide a more detailed look, drawing on data collected from visits to 260 English, math, social…

High-stakes writing assessments currently exert a strong influence on the writing curriculum and instruction in schools across the United States. Under these circumstances it is important to examine the construct of writing competence on which these assessments are based, as well as the extent to which this construct supports the goals of…

Assessment, particularly formative assessment, is critical to knowing how a student is performing academically and how best to support that student. Teachers, especially new teachers, need ongoing support in developing and using both summative and formative assessments as an integral part of their instructional practice. Written collaboratively by…