Assessing Writing

Writing is one of the central skills a student must master. Why should they be tested? How should they be tested? What tasks should be used? The answers to these questions are provided by this book, which examines the theory behind the practice of assessing a student's writing abilities.

Anderson offers smart, ready-to-use ideas for assessment.

In Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies, Asao B. Inoue theorizes classroom writing assessment as a complex system that is “more than” its interconnected elements. To explain how and why antiracist work in the writing classroom is vital to literacy learning, Inoue incorporates ideas about the white racial habitus that informs dominant discourses in the academy and other contexts.

This book on assessing writing is designed for teachers, school leaders, and evaluators. It begins with a collection of assessment practices that will increase teachers' efficiency and effectiveness as they guide students in learning how to think and write successfully.

The authors of this packet are proven experts in the field of writing and have complied this resource based on real teacher needs. Everything you need to know about assessing writing is here! If you are invested in helping students become better writers, you will benefit greatly from this resource.

In this book, authors Murphy and O’Neill propose a new way forward, moving away from high-stakes, test-based writing assessment and the curriculum it generates and toward an approach to assessment that centers on student learning and success. Reviewing the landscape of writing assessment and existing research-based theories on writing, the authors demonstrate how a test-based approach to accountability and current practices have undermined effective teaching and learning of writing. This book bridges the gap between real-world writing that takes place in schools, college, and careers and the writing that students are asked to do in standardized writing assessments to offer a new ecological approach to writing assessment. Murphy and O’Neill’s new way forward turns accountability inside out to help teachers understand the role of formative assessments and assessment as inquiry. It also brings the outside in, by bridging the gap between authentic writing and writing assessment. Through these two strands, readers learn how assessment systems can be restructured to become better aligned with contemporary understandings of writing and with best practices in teaching. With examples of assessments from elementary school through college, chapters include guidance on designing assessments to address multiple kinds of writing, integrate reading with writing, and incorporate digital technology and multimodality. Emphasizing the central role that teachers play in systemic reform, the authors offer sample assessments developed with intensive teacher involvement that support learning and provide information for the evaluation of programs and schools. This book is an essential resource for graduate students, instructors, scholars and policymakers in writing assessment, composition, and English education.

This practical and realistic book is designed to help practitioners who wish to improve their effectiveness in assessing a large and a diverse range of students. It will help them to: clarify their role in assessment gain confidence on issues and terms and consider variations between discipline compare and extend their current range of solutions to common problems with advice from practitioners consider in more depth essays, reports and projects, plagiarism and language.