Claims that portfolios can be reliably rated in a large-scale assessment situation. Shares the experiences of writing program administrators concerning portfolio assessment. Outlines practical methods of gaining reasonable reliability in portfolio scoring. (RS)

Describes the difficulties in assessing writing improvement in high school students based on national reports. Discovers that students' fluency, their use of dialogue, and their ease in moving between the abstract and the concrete is increasing. Suggests the resources of the National Assessment of Educational Progress might yield the information…

Discusses the dilemmas of evaluating and assessing students' poetry. (SR)

One minor but irritating problem that most composition teachers face--especially those who handle masses of papers at the high school level--involves coming up with a method of grading that is demonstrably objective but not so rigid that it allows no room for judgment. The author proposes a hybrid grading system: combining numbers and letters. The…

This study examines discussions of model papers in a high school Advanced Placement English classroom where students were preparing for a high-stakes writing assessment. Much of the current research on talk about writing in various contexts such as classroom discourse, teacher-student writing conferences, and peer tutoring has emphasized the…

This article used work from the writing assessment literature to develop a framework for assessing the impact and perceived value of written, audio, and combined written and audio feedback strategies across four global and 22 discrete dimensions of feedback. Using a quasi-experimental research design, students at three U.S. universities were…

Test-based accountability programs are designed to promote improved standards of teaching and learning within the systems of education that they are connected to. Brenan [Brenan, A. L. (2006). "Perspectives on the evolution and future of educational measurement." In: Robert (Ed.), "Educational measurement" (4th ed., pp. 1-16).…

Type and quality of revisions made by students between first and final drafts of a state writing test were scored using a revision taxonomy. Scorers categorized revisions first by unit (e.g., word, phrase, sentence), and then by type (e.g., addition, substitution, spelling). They then evaluated the impact of each revision on the readability of the…

This article is a description of the process of constructing an assessment of written and oral language for pre-service teachers. This assessment was used prior to their formal admission into the teacher education programme. The rationale for this evaluation is presented along with the actual processes involved. Finally, comparisons are made…

The authors explored the credibility of using informal reading inventories and writing samples for 138 students (K-4) to evaluate the effectiveness of a summer literacy program. Running Records (a measure of a child's reading level) and teacher experience during daily reading instruction were used to estimate the reliability of the more formal…

Writing is a highly valued skill that is often neglected in the classroom; one reason is that teachers often do not receive adequate training in writing assessment and instruction. Teachers, particularly preservice teachers, need practice making detailed assessments of student writing and to build their confidence for assessing student writing,…

The concept of information functions developed for dichotomous item response models is adapted for the partial credit model. The information function is explained in terms of the model parameters and scoring functions. The relationship between the item information function and the expected score function is also discussed. The information function…

A study was initiated by a university rhetoric department to investigate the reliability of methods of rating student themes written as prerequisites for course exemptions. Ten experienced raters were selected to rate the beginning, middle, and ending paragraphs of 30 previously scored exemption themes that represented a range of achievement.…

Advises teachers not to evaluate students on day-to-day growth, but instead to allow for measurable growth, evaluating them after a suitable period of time has elapsed. Assumes that true growth in writing occurs slowly, that it is seldom linear, and that distinctions between disparate texts remain spurious. (MS)

Thirty-three College of Education professors at the University of Saskatchewan were surveyed to determine their expectations and perceptions of and attitudes toward student writing. Results indicate that professors complained more about lack of student ability in the argumentative mode than student errors in syntax and mechanics of writing. (TJH)