Discusses how examination of the assessment criteria in a basic writing program prompted fruitful, continuing program evaluation and change. Reports that the assessment study validated efforts to deemphasize grammar and spelling instruction in basic writing courses. (MM)

Evaluates a three-year pilot project in mainstreaming basic writers at the City University of New York. Suggests that the social and political contexts of a project need to be taken into account in the earliest stages of evaluation. Claims the empirically verifiable account that researchers sought was compromised by the socio-political forces…

In summer 1990, the English Department of the Metropolitan Community College District (MCCD) in Missouri conducted a self-study to determine whether the English program's subject matter, academic standards, and methods of instruction were consistent with objectives. An Evaluation Committee, consisting of three English instructors representing each…