In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court determined that the state's public school system was unconstitutional and called for the General Assembly to "recreate and re-establish a new system of common schools." A new system of accountability in language arts departments required portfolio assessment that was both objective and strictly…

Postmodernism claims to shatter the mirage of essentialism by denying the image of a unified self. The result, it asserts, is the freedom to assume a new kind of authority, signified in the image of the "subject position." It assumes, further, that because the writer is capable of multiple selves, he or she will perforce manifest…

Information on current trends and issues informally discussed and then delineated by the directors of six National Council of Teachers of English commissions, is presented in this 13th annual report. The commissions and their directors are: (1) Commission on Curriculum (Dorothy King); (2) Commission on Composition (Christine Kline); (3) Commission…

In 1990, a study was conducted at Rio Hondo College (Whittier, California) to determine if readers exhibited any bias in scoring test papers that were composed on a word processor as opposed to being written by hand. The study began with the formulation of tentative pilot study questions and the development of procedures to address them. Three…

Two typical science activities found in textbooks for elementary and middle school students were analyzed to determine the quality of the written text and the integrity of the science represented in the activity. Each activity was performed and critiqued from a number of perspectives. The framework used to compare and contrast these activities is…

Intended to guide writing teachers through the complexities of evaluation, the essays in this collection represent a variety of approaches to evaluation. The essays display, however, some common beliefs about what is fundamentally important to writing teachers' work--specifically, the need: to distinguish between "grading" and…

A study examined the effectiveness of a staff development program in the Yale (Michigan) public schools, intended to provide professional development to all elementary and secondary language arts teachers about the instruction of writing process and the evaluation of student work. Evaluation of the professional development model included teacher…

Reports on the student assessment systems of states participating in the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory are presented. These reports were developed from the database of the Council of Chief State School Officers and the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory. Detailed information about each state's student assessment program…

In fall 1991, Solano Community College (California) undertook a study comparing the writing skills of students in an integrated course combining history and freshman English composition with students in unpaired history and English classes. Students were divided into three groups: the integrated class and two control groups, one taking history…

Originally developed as part of a project for the Department of Defense Schools (DoDDS) system, this learning package on ways to evaluate writing is designed for teachers who wish to upgrade or expand their teaching skills on their own. The package includes an overview of the project; a comprehensive search of the ERIC database; a lecture giving…

There are compelling reasons to use talk in the writing classroom to improve both expressive and expository writing. First, speaking is natural, and students come to the writing classroom linguistically well-developed and confident. Second, talking encourages exploration of words by slowing down the thought process without completely stopping it.…

Focusing on the topic of composition, especially in the state of Illinois, this special journal issue begins with a description of the Illinois Articulation Project, a network developed to share and coordinate writing in the state. The second article describes Illinois State University's National Endowment for the Humanities program for…

Concerned with the failure of multiple choice tests to measure composition--as opposed to grammar and usage--skills, college researchers studied the value of using writing samples to place students in composition classes. Evaluating the writing samples of 300 incoming freshmen, they did not find a high correlation between sample scores and…

Reading/writing skills of prospective elementary and secondary school teachers from 7 colleges located in 4 geographical areas of the United States were examined to discover what test-performance differences, if any, occurred among the 375 subjects. Test instruments included: the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (Form D); a Criterion-Referenced Test of…

Based on two national assessments of the writing proficiency of representative samples of students in grades 4, 8, and 11 conducted during the school years ending in 1984 and 1988, this report assesses the informative, persuasive, and imaginative writing performance of the nation's students and tracks changes in performance over time. The first…