Suggests methods for improving the quality of essay exams when teaching literature. (DF)

Describes assignments that integrate ideas from student journals into expository and deliberate essays. (HOD)

It is hypothesized that the readers of an essay respond to a variable in terms of its context with other variables. Sex, race, reader expectation, and quality of handwriting were crossed to study their interaction effects. Results showed complex interactions of expectations, writing, and sex within race. (Author/LMO)

Specific ways in which social studies teachers can increase opportunities for students to write without increasing their own often-incredible paper loads are suggested. These include the holistic scoring of essay tests, read-around-groups, and student journals. (RM)

Argues that when tests equate proficiency, competency, and literacy with writing academic essays, they maintain a severely understated and mistaken notion of what it means to write well and usefully and vigorously. (FL)

The accuracy issues involved in detecting student writing skill deficiencies, factors to be dealt with or controlled, and procedural and statistical methods for controlling these factors are the focus of this article. The accuracy needed for effective instructional planning requires stability in writing assessment programs. (DWH)

Argues that teachers of writing and literature need to make connections between the classroom experience and personal and community values. (MM)

This essay discusses the shift during the 1930s of black voters form the party of Lincoln to that of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. A select list of books and articles on blacks is also provided for secondary and college teachers who wish to treat this theme in the classroom. (Author/RM)

The author forthrightly declares in this book of essays on school reform that teachers are no more saintly than anyone else, that poor schools should be closed and lousy teachers should be fired, that philanthropy may sometimes do more harm than good, that teaching experience is not essential to being a school principal, that schools should be…

This paper describes a study on rater training that involved the analysis of ratings given to English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) compositions by 8 inexperienced and 8 experienced raters both before and after rater training, using FACETS (Linacre, 1990, 1993), which provides measures of rater severity and consistency. The testing text was a…

In the belief that questions about peace, justice, freedom, and security are vital to civic education, the United States Institute of Peace established the National Peace Essay Contest, which is designed to promote discussion of international peace and conflict resolution, complement existing curricula, and strengthen students' research, writing,…

This paper provides an overview of some recent work in automated essay scoring that focuses on writing improvement at the postsecondary level. The paper illustrates the Vantage Intellimetric (tm) automated essay scorer that is being used as part of a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) project that uses technology to grade…

Six hundred and six essays written during 1969 and 1970 are compared in terms of the main themes or events described; the pupils individually chose to write on either the topic of What happened on Saturday night' or My Street.' (JM)

"Students in a college course were given written criteria, divided into teams, and asked to score their own essay examination... The results support the generalization that subjective scoring standards are readily communicable. (Author)

Change in educational objectives must reflect an awareness of the realities of our country's changing values and culture. Adults must be prepared to accept and answer youth's questions. (JB)