Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states' current…

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states' current…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative, experimental study was to determine if there was a significant difference in 2016 Smarter Balanced Assessment (SBA) English language arts (ELA) writing levels and ELA overall achievement levels between 7th- and 8th-grade students with and without access to Chromebooks for at least one 46-minute period of…

"Fable Writer" is an online reading, writing and research tool designed to facilitate synchronous, collaborative writing tool that enables learners to read and copy text and images from teacher-curated books and Web-based resources in the "Fable Reader" digital library. The "Fable Writer" project addressed two…

This article shares the results of a 3-year study of the use of threaded discussion groups within intact eighth-grade classrooms in a middle school in Southern California. Using mixed-methods data collection and analysis, it addresses questions about how technology may be used effectively to create engaged writers and how student access to…

In 1998 for the first time, the NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) administered a writing assessment at the state level. This report describes the writing achievement of California eighth-grade students and compares their overall performance to students in the West region of the United States and the nation (using data from the…

This booklet outlines the California state guidelines for writing which assert that students should be carefully taught to read and compose many types of discourse to prepare them for higher education, the job market, and citizenship in democracy. The booklet summarizes the purposes for which the California Assessment Program (CAP) was developed,…