Thursday, April 03, 2008

The Nation's Report Card: Writing 2007

"About 140,000 8th-grade students and about 28,000 12th graders participated in the assessment. The 8th-grade sample is much larger because it provides results for the nation, for most states, and for 10 urban school districts. At the 12th-grade, we have national results only. There was no 4th-grade assessment.

We assessed student writing for three different purposes—narrative, informative, and persuasive. In the scoring of student answers, we recognized that these were essentially first drafts, not polished pieces of writing. Student responses could receive any of six ratings—from "Excellent" to "Unsatisfactory." But even an "Excellent" response could contain errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation, as long as they were few in number and did not interfere with a reader’s ability to understand the response. More errors were acceptable for ratings of "Skillful" and "Sufficient," again as long as they did not interfere with understanding. Examples of NAEP writing questions and student responses, along with scoring guides and performance data, are available on the NAEP web site" Source: National Center for education Statistics

Download Complete Report (pdf) | Link to NCES "Nation's Report Card" web site

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