This report compares students' scores on the 2000 Delaware Student Testing Program (DSTP) writing assessment with the writing scores of their counterparts in 1998 and 1999. In addition, the results of a writing study are discussed briefly. Delaware students in grades 3, 5, 8, and 10 took the 2000 DSTP writing assessment, responding to a text-based writing task and a stand-alone writing prompt. Each student's response to the text-based task was scored by one trained reader, and responses to the stand-alone task were scored by two readers. A look at the 3 years' writing data shows that stand-alone writing scores dropped slightly across grades in 1999 from 1998, but increased somewhat in 2000 from 1999. The majority of the changes were less than one third of a standard deviation, with the exception of grade 10, where increases were larger. The text-based scores showed a trend toward decline across the grades, especially from 1999 to 2000, except in grade 2000. A research study was designed and conducted to study the possible reasons for low performance on the text-based writing in 2000. This study relied on review by a panel of teachers who rescored anchor papers for each grade and review of student writings by a second panel of teachers. Results of this study are reported separately. (Contains 4 figures and 10 tables.) (SLD)