Language arts teachers participated in an inservice program, The Writer's Clinic, and evaluated their students' improvement in writing ability using holistic essay scoring techniques. Seventh and eighth grade students were administered an essay composition pretest in December; the same essay topic was given as the post test in May. Students were allowed 30 minutes to complete the composition. Scores were assigned to the essays by 44 Writer's Clinic participants. Sample student papers were selected to illustrate the scoring standards, which included ratings of one through four. Readers assigned a score representing their impression of the total paper. Three teachers rated each student paper, without being aware of the scores assigned by other raters. Of 5,788 papers which were read and scored, 258 (4.46%) had discrepancies in scoring which were resolved by clinic staff. Interrater reliability ranged from .77 to .84, and readers were able to score an average of 64 papers per hour per rater. As hypothesized, differences were found between seventh and eighth graders, and between pretests and post tests. Validity of the scoring method was also supported by the relationship of essay scores to separate teacher ratings of students' writing abilities and to grades in composition courses. (GDC)