History of Large Scale
Writing Assessment in
the United States
• Not surprisingly Harvard led the way with essay testing,
according to Connors in Composition Rhetoric, starting
“with the advent of written entrance exams at Harvard in
1874 and the general adoption of such exams at most
established colleges” (11).
• Not long after, Adams Sherman Hill, who administered
the entrance exam at Harvard, that Harvard, in the
1880s, institute “remedial writing instruction—just until
the crisis passed” (Connors 11)
• The Crisis has not passed and the field of composition,
in some ways, owes its very existence to this ongoing
crisis, since the first collegiate composition class
(according to folks like Connors and Berlin) started
because of the literacy crisis at Harvard.
• Testing led, in some ways, to the field of writing studies.
An Interesting
Beginning
• Around the same time that writing exams are beginning,
we have Alfred Binet (1859-1911), creating the first
“intelligence test” in 1905, which was administered to
Paris school children would “do tasks such as follow
commands, copy patterns, name objects, and put things
in order or arrange them properly” (PBS)
• Here we have the beginning of psychometrics, with IQs,
and numbers seeming to represent a “native
intelligence.”
• There must have been something in the water at the turn
of the 20th century.
Early Tests
• It would be fair to say that they were based on
an idealized curriculum.
• And it would be fair to say that this was about
sorting students from the very beginning, which
is the point that Robert Connors, Richard
Ohman, James Berlin, and many others make.
• It would also be fair to say that early tests were
punitive in nature—sort out those who needed
“remediation”. (Note the latinate word, the semimedical terminology.)
Classroom
Assessment and
Testing: What We
Do, But Loathe
• One of my favorite pieces
on grading and classroom
assessment goes by the
great title: “Why I (Used to)
Hate to Give Grades” by
Lynn Z. Bloom, which is less
hopeful than it sounds.
• Bloom has “made peace”
with grading. However, that
doesn’t mean she likes it.
• Generally grading is not
loved, by teachers or
students, but I’m not telling
you anything you don’t
know.
Classroom Assessment and Testing: What
We Do, But Loathe
• But does it have to be this way?
• Responses:
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• Ultimately, this class will deal with this as an
affective and practical issue—but also as a
potential area of very interesting research.
What We Know About Grading and
Responding to Student Papers
• From John Bean, we know that there are ways
to cut back on the teaching load: responding to
drafts and quickly grading. Also, rubrics—which
Heidi Andrade writes about with great gusto.
• We know, from an array of folks (Haswell,
Sommers and Lees) that teachers tend to mark
too much and focus too much on grammar.
• From Tom Newkirk, we know this: oftentimes
our comments are misinterpreted by students,
and we often misinterpret student writing.
More on Large
Scale Tests
• Historically, we have the
formation of CCCC in 1950, and
from the beginning, writing
assessment “surely was there”
(Yancey 483).
• As Yancey Describes it,
assessment has moved in three
waves that have never entirely
subsumed previous waves:
– Objective Tests: 1950-70
– Holistically scored tests: 19701986
– Portfolios: 1986 to present
• Through it all writing
assessment is a place of
contest, politics, and
considerable disagreement.
Primary and Secondary Writing
Tests and Assessments
• Past: Objective tests—remember Binet and the IQ tests.
• Then: Written tests
– New York Regents tests
• Now:
– SAT 2
– NCLB
– Accountability: Everything from the Spelling’s Commission, to
NCLB, to state legislatures.
– FCAs and John Collins: Reductive and, maybe, effective.
– Hopefully: Directed Self-Placement, like what Royer and Gilles
describe at Grand Valley State in Michigan.
Wither Writing Assessment?
Whither Us?
• There are computers, like erater, that promise online
writing assessment.
• There are things like TOPIC and IMOAT, that help place,
and then grade, student work—but rely on humans to
respond to writing.
• Then there’s us, figuring out what we will write and
research about:
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Large Scale Writing Assessments,
Classroom Assessment Practices,
Campus-wide Assessments,
Portfolio Assessments,
Computerized Writing Assessment,
And other things?
Works Cited
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Andrade, Heidi. “Using Rubrics to Promote Thinking and Learning.”
Educational Leadership. 57.5. February 2000, 13-18. 4 January 2008.
http://www.ascd.org.
Bean, John. Engaging Ideas: The Professor's Guide to Integrating Writing,
Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. New York: JosseyBass, 1996.
Connors, Robert. Composition-Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory and
Pedagogy. Pittsburgh, PA: UP of Pittsburgh, 1997.
Haswell, Richard H. "Minimal Marking." College English 45.6 (Oct. 1983):
600-604.
Lees, Elaine O. "Evaluating Student Writing." College Composition and
Communication 30.4 (Dec. 1979): 370-374.
Newkirk, Thomas.(1984). How students read student papers: An exploratory
study. Written Communication, 1(3), 283-305.
PBS. “Binet Pioneers Intelligence Testing.” 1998.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh05te.html. 4 January
2008.
Sommers, Nancy. "Responding to Student Writing." College Composition
and Communication 33.2 (May 1982): 148-156.
Yancey, Kathleen Blake. “Looking Back as We Look Forward: Historicizing
Writing Assessment as a Rhetorical Act.” 50.3. February 1999, 483-503.