Supplementary to "NAEP 1996 Trends in Academic Progress," this report describes two aspects of writing for which change has been measured since 1984: writing fluency as determined by holistic scoring; and mastery of the conventions of written English as determined by mechanics scoring. The introduction discusses the layout and means of…

The Technology Immersion Pilot (TIP) sets forth a vision for technology immersion in Texas public schools. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) originally directed more than $14.5 million in federal Title II, Part D monies toward funding a wireless learning environment for high-need middle schools through a competitive grant process. A concurrent…

Two groups of freshman students participated in the experiment. They were enrolled in their first ESL writing course. Before instruction, both groups were pre-tested. They wrote an essay. T-test results showed significant differences between both groups in writing ability. The experimental group made too many errors and had many writing problems.…

This study was conducted to determine whether Ontario students' abilities to apply rubrics accurately in order to self-assess or to assess peers' written work were related to their current levels of achievement in writing. The project examined differences in assessment ability for children attending different grades, gender differences,…

Explored relationships between middle school students' writing processes and their written products. Results suggest that students need to engage in a variety of writing tasks; teachers must be aware of the complexity involved in composing to assess progress; editing must be kept in its proper perspective; and teachers should recognize that…

This study of 63 students (in grades 2-8) with mild to moderate disabilities found that students in classrooms using curriculum-based measurement (CBM) achieved better than controls on reading measures. The study also found that students of teachers who received CBM expert system instructional consultation achieved better than others on written…

In 1987-88, as a follow-up to a 1986-87 Learning Assessment Retention Consortium (LARC) study of the educational outcomes of 7,500 remedial writing students enrolled in California community colleges, data from the academic records of 2,701 of the original students were collected, and surveys were completed by a subset of 865 of the students. Only…

An intervention study was designed to implement and evaluate an instructional program combining the writing process and computers to improve the writing quantity and quality and investigate the apprehensions of middle level students. Subjects, 75 sixth-grade students, were chosen from a relatively small rural school system. The intervention took…

With the mandate of "No Child Left Behind," high-stakes achievement testing is firmly in place in every state. The few studies that have explored the effectiveness of high-stakes testing using NAEP scores have yielded mixed results. This study considered state demographic characteristics for each NAEP testing period in reading, writing,…

The purpose of this empirical study was to determine if there was a measurable difference on the content and organization portion of a narrative writing test by a sample of students taught by teachers who received professional development (PD) as compared to students whose teachers did not have this training and thus their students did not receive…

A study examined the progress of the second year of a 3-year literacy project in which undergraduate students enrolled in methods courses used children's literature during reading instruction of urban children, grades K-8 considered at-risk due to conditions of poverty. The entire school population participated in the project along with the…

A study investigated the writing of incipient bilinguals (students who were in the initial process of acquiring a second language). A total of four Chinese-speaking children were chosen for final, in-depth study over a 2-year period at a middle school in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Data included initial interviews and observations,…

Reports on a study of 126 secondary English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) students' transfer of essay organization skills between languages (Icelandic and English). Pre- and posttest proficiency scores were analyzed. It was concluded that students' success in transferring writing skills between languages is assisted by their grammatical proficiency…

The article presents the cultural background, methodological design, theory, and results of a comprehensive research project where the doxa and textual norms of the judges at the national writing exam in Norway were studied. The background of the study is the quite comprehensive reforms in Norway of the way writing is taught in the upper secondary…

Studies the writing achievement of 28 11-year olds attending an urban Newcastle upon Tyne (England) school and their ability to conform to standard English writing conventions. Finds the influence of a nonstandard dialect (Tyneside) to be minor. Observes writing difficulties are frequently related to mastering the writing system itself rather than…