College and university instructors who assess student writing, including but not limited to teachers of first-year composition, sometimes keep the gate. Gatekeeping by writing instructors is an activity directly related to grading practices and, in many cases, to grading practices which emphasize formal, mechanical, usually sentence-level choices…

The purpose of the two studies reported in this article was to examine technical features of curriculum-based measures for beginning writers. In Study 1, 50 first graders responded to word copying, sentence copying, and story prompts. In Study 2, 50 additional first graders responded to letter, picture-word, picture-theme, and photo prompts. In…

Two teachers engage in assessment discussions based on an analytical rubric to assess an ELL student's writing. Discourse analysis methods were used to analyze recorded/transcribed assessments and discussions. The teachers focused on descriptors for the rubric's lowest scores, neglecting their own knowledge and experience with English learners. As…

Given the problems experienced by hearing-impaired individuals in learning the written language, a pedagogical approach was tested. The study examined the links between the development of representations of alphabetic system and the results in reading and writing of first graders. In the study, there were 31 hearing-impaired children and 25…

Presented at the national conference for the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2009. This discussed the development and implementation of the new SAT writing section.

Generalizability of writing scores has always been a longstanding concern in L2 writing assessment. A number of studies have been conducted to investigate this topic during the last two decades. However, with the introduction of new test methods, such as reading-to-write tasks, generalizability studies need to focus on the score accuracy of…

Many national reports indicate that more attention needs to be placed on writing and the teaching of writing in schools. The purpose of this quantitative study was to, first, examine the structure of the DWA and, second, to use the scores from the DWA to examine the relationship between ELL status and writing proficiency. Five major research…

The Maine Department of Education wanted to use longitudinal data from its data system to better understand whether and how student and school characteristics are associated with student performance on the state-mandated Maine High School Assessment (MHSA). It was particularly interested in understanding the factors associated with changes in test…

This study reports Year 1 findings from a multisite cluster randomized controlled trial of a cognitive strategies approach to teaching text-based analytical writing for mainstreamed Latino English language learners (ELLs) in 9 middle schools and 6 high schools. There were 103 English teachers stratified by school and grade and then randomly…

The study investigated the effects of the Cognitive Level and Quality Writing Assessment (CLAQWA) rubric on the cognitive skill and writing skill growth of college freshmen. The participants (n = 107) were enrolled in a composition course at a Midwestern state university. The nonequivalent control group design used quantitative analysis with…

Forty-one states have adopted the Common Core State Standards. Now, implementing the Standards--to realize their purpose of increasing the college and career readiness of high school graduates--takes on primary importance. This transition to implementation introduces a number of challenging questions: What is the baseline of student performance on…

The purpose of the 2011 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) Writing Framework is to describe how the new NAEP Writing Assessment is designed to measure students' writing at grades 4, 8, and 12. As the ongoing national indicator of the academic achievement of students in the United States, NAEP regularly collects information on…

Low scores of minority students who performed below the standard on the seventh-grade writing test of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), are the basis for this study, which examines the effectiveness of Saturday Title I classes in increasing student scores on the TAKS. The treatment of instructional intervention is delivered…

Integrated tasks are currently employed in a number of L2 exams since they are perceived as an addition to the writing-only task type. Given this trend, the current study investigates composite score generalizability of both reading-to-write and writing-only tasks. For this purpose, a multivariate generalizability analysis is used to investigate…

To facilitate the interpretation of test scores from the new TOEIC[R] (Test of English for International Communications[TM]) speaking and writing tests as measures of English-language proficiency, we administered a self-assessment inventory to TOEIC examinees in Japan and Korea, to gather their perceptions of their ability to perform a variety of…