Standardized Writing Assessment

I was interested reading this article, especially seeing what other states have to offer in terms of standardized writing assessments. I did like Florida's requirement of a writing assessment for graduation. I do think that although the HSPAs are flawed, I do agree with its approach to assessing writing. The Holistic rubric does allow for some growth and it's written in a way that the kids can understand the grade they received. I was just doing this lesson today actually: I take several writing examples from a persuasive writing task and the class grades them using the state rubric. By doing this, the kids can recognize what a "2" paper is and say, "Hey, I know I don't want to do that, so what can I do to get the "4"'s and "5"'s? Now tomorrow they will go in and write on the same prompt that we went over in class today and hopefully learn from yesterday's lesson.

I don't enjoy teaching to the test, but really, this is the reality that our kids are living in. I can't, in good conscience, send them in to this test in 4 weeks with no preparation.

When the article goes on to talk about how technology is changing this, I remembered something I used to use called Criterion. The article goes on to describe something similar to this. This was an online writing assessment with the Holistic Scoring Guide built into it...kids would write on a persuasive prompt or a picture prompt and the computer, within a minute, would come back with the grade on the scale for them. It was most effective as a first draft, I felt...I always made kids rewrite what they wrote, even if it came back as a six...if it came back as a six, then I would tell the kids to strengthen their compositional risks, which I think is the hardest thing to get right on the HSPA...using techniques like flashback or a different point of view on a picture prompt, or taking a specific tone on a persuasive task.

To close, let me just reiterate how important it is that kids know this criteria/rubric ahead of time. The author goes on to say that kids can eventually use this information to create a rubric of their own, and that I think is the logical next step.