Examining Writing Constructs in U.S. State and National Assessments

• In Event: 63.084 - Roundtable Session 22
  In Roundtable Session: 63.084-3 - Validity and Construction in Assessment of Student Learning

Abstract

Through content analysis of 78 prompts and 35 rubrics from 27 states’ writing assessments, and three representative prompts and rubrics from the NAEP, the study finds that state writing assessments and the NAEP seem to align in their adoption of the writing process approach, their attention to audience and students’ topical knowledge, their accommodations through procedure facilitators, and their inclusion of organization, structure, content, details, sentence fluency, and semantic aspects as well as general conventions in their assessment criteria. However, the NAEP’s writing assessment differs from many states’ by having explicit directions for students to review their writing, giving students two timed writing tasks, making informative composition one of the three genres assessed, and including genre-specific components in their rubrics.

Authors

• Ya Mo, Michigan State University

• Gary A. Troia, Michigan State University