The Florida Writing Assessment was implemented in grades 4, 8, and 10 in 1998 as required by the Florida legislature. The assessment is designed to measure students' proficiency in writing responses to assigned topics within a designated testing period. This report contains writing assessment results for the whole state, school districts, and individual schools for 139,810 eighth graders taking the standard curriculum. The program results provide a comparative measure of student performance for schools and districts for each annual administration, as well as a basis for identifying trends in writing over a period of several years. It does not provide an exact index of changes in performance from year to year. (SLD)