Teaching Writing in an Era of Standards and Accountability

Running Head: TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA Teaching Writing in an Era of Standards and Accountability Merzili Villanueva University of Florida Unpublished student paper. University of Florida, 2004. 1 TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 2 Abstract After implementing the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) in 2002, standardized tests have taken center stage in the educational arena, sparking controversies as to whether they are a reliable means of measuring students’ writing abilities. U.S. policymakers claim that the higher standards imposed by the NCLBA are raising students’ achievement in writing, and that standardized testing is an effective means of assessing students. Many educators, however, believe that the standardized tests are inaccurate measures of writing proficiency, and its presence in U.S. education may have a negative impact on students’ writing development. Acknowledging that classroom teachers have varying degrees of autonomy as to how they choose to create, modify, and adopt their writing curriculum, it might behoove teachers, administrators, policymakers, and other stakeholders to consider both arguments—examining the effects of standardized writing assessment on teaching writing to K-12 students, and reexamining the implications of maintaining teacher integrity and implementing pedagogically sound curricular and instructional strategies and practices. Keywords: writing, curriculum, instructional strategies, No Child Left Behind, K-12 education TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 3 Teaching Writing in an Era of Standards and Accountability In 2002, President Bush and his policymakers authorized his most prominent and controversial mandate for education, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA). The premise of the act was to “change the culture of America’s schools by closing the achievement gap . . . and teaching students based on what works” (United Sates Department of Education [USDOE], 2002). The NCLBA emphasizes more testing in an effort to promote higher standards and accountability in American education. The vision is to elevate the achievement levels of American students through a trickle-down effect: By increasing the expectations of our nation’s students, schools and teachers would work arduously to enhance the quality of education for all students. Eventually, all U.S. students would perform at the same level—minorities, students in low-income school districts, and students “at-risk” would even perform to 100 percent proficiency by 2012. Attempting to raise the achievement of America’s students in all subject areas, many states have implemented a writing component to their standardized assessments. For instance, in 2000, The Florida Department of Education (FLDOE) implemented the then decade-old Florida Writing Assessment Program (FWAP), or Florida Writes!, into Florida’s Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT)—the test is now called FCAT Writing. Standardized writing assessments, or direct writing assessments, such as the FCAT Writing measure students’ proficiency of the state standards in writing. Students are evaluated based on their responses to expository or narrative prompts within a forty-five-minute testing period. Unlike the multiplechoice format of the math, social studies, science, and reading portions of the test, the writing component is evaluated using a rubric, measuring on a scale of “unscorable” to six. TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 4 The notion of using standardized writing assessments is controversial; debate centers on two central issues: whether the tests are helping to boost students’ performance in writing, and whether such testing encourages teachers to strive toward providing more excellent writing instruction. Policymakers and proponents of the writing tests contend that the state-mandated writing assessments are encouraging teachers to improve their instruction and therefore develop their students’ writing proficiency. However, many educators and pedagogues assert that standardized writing assessments do not improve students’ writing abilities or teachers’ writing instruction. A System That Works Raising the Write Standards Although all subjects in the school curriculum are significant in students’ education, literacy must be at the forefront. In 1998, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reported that at least three-fourths of 4th, 8th, and 12th students demonstrated gradelevel proficiency in writing, less the 16 percent of 4th and 8th students and 22 percent of 12th grade students who had not mastered the basic writing skills (Manzo, 2001, p. 1). This alarming data prompted the national and state governments to critically examine the current practices of writing instruction in the classroom. The FCAT Writing and the following mandates of the NCLBA attempted to respond to the need for stronger emphasis on state and local academic standards that develop students’ writing skills. The NCLBA highlights “teaching students based on what works.” Baldwin (2004) has noted that policymakers, advisory groups, and educators in the United States perceive writing as central to promoting critical thinking and learning in every academic discipline (p. 72). Strong writing skills allow students to demonstrate that they are constructing meaningful perceptions in TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 5 their academic subjects. Furthermore, the National Commission on Writing in America’s Schools and Colleges has concluded, “Public schools must devote more time and resources to improving students’ writing proficiency if they hope to raise achievement overall and prepare students for future successes” (Manzo, 2003, p. 10). Writing competency supports students’ endeavors in the twenty-first-century school and the real world—where communication is vital to success. National and state-mandated writing assessments are simply a means of ensuring a comprehensive and high quality education for all students. Reliable and Valid Direct writing assessments are a movement toward a reliable and valid means of assessing students’ ability to write within the conventions of the English language. Although the system is cost and time efficient, multiple-choice tests have been touted as an invalid measure of what students know. Multiple-choice items that focus on various aspects of writing such as spelling, vocabulary, grammar, word choice, and sentence structure, mistakenly suggest that good writing is the sum of the tested components. According to Mabry (1999), the format implies that the “ability to answer multiple-choice items on these topics is a measure of the ability to write well” (p. 677). Writing rubrics are a more reliable and valid mode of assessing writing proficiency. Writing rubrics stipulate both what students should know and how well they should perform. Criteria and performance standards are identified, and achievement is denoted by a point system. The FCAT Writing, like many direct writing assessments, employs a holistic scoring system. Holistic measurements prioritize the overall effect of a piece of writing, in contrast to analytic evaluation, which underscores disparate components. Therefore, direct writing assessments can provide more dependable data for evaluating students’ writing TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 6 proficiency. School districts, states, and the nation will have a more accurate gauge of performance and progress, which can help identify and establish goals for the future. Rubrics tend to improve inter-rater reliability, or the likelihood that different raters will award similar scores. Agreement on scores is enhanced because the readers are trained to use rubrics uniformly. Readers for the FCAT Writing are trained not to attend to one aspect of the writing, but instead focus on the whole (Florida Department of Education [FLDOE], 2003). For instance, FCAT readers consider four elements when scoring the writings—focus, organization, support, and conventions. However, they do not assess students’ writing proficiency based on their mastery of each element. Prompts and Preparation Proponents of the writing assessments believe that as students prepare for the exam, they are developing valuable critical thinking and writing skills. White (1995) has asserted that these writing tests require students to recall information, select salient information and appropriate vocabulary, and construct sentences and paragraphs in an organized fashion (p. 30). Writing tests, as opposed to multiple-choice tests, are more accurate gauges of students’ writing ability because they are engaged in the actual task. Students must present cogent and logical arguments in an organized fashion on demand, reflecting those expectations in the college classroom and in the workplace. Florida students receive a prompt that poses them to write an expository or narrative essay. The five-paragraph essay can be used as a stepping-stone for preparing students for the FCAT Writing, as many teachers have broadened their repertoires of writing styles in their writing instruction. Anderson (2001) stated that “[writing] instruction will improve” as teachers adopt the five-paragraph essay into their genre studies (Manzo, 2001, p. 1). The vision is that TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 7 students will incorporate the structure into their schema of “writing,” tap into that schema during the test, and perform at high levels. Evidence of Achievement Proponents of standardized writing assessments claim that the higher standards and accountability measures are improving students’ writing proficiencies. In 2003, the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the outcomes of the 2002 NAEP in Writing (U.S. Department of Education, 2003). Several online media sources have presented U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige’s declaration that “The nation’s children are writing better [than in 1998, when the first assessment was given], which is indeed encouraging news” (e.g., Cheung, 2003; Feller, 2003; Prah, 2003). FCAT writing scores reinforce Secretary Paige’s report. According to the FLDOE, the FCAT Writing average scores—expository and narrative combined—for fourth and eighth-grade students have increased from 1993 to 2004. For instance, the average scores for fourth-grade students in writing were 2.2, 3.0, 3.4, and 3.7 for the years 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2004 respectively. For eighth grade, the averages were 2.7, 3.3, 3.8, and 3.8 for the aforementioned years. The averages for tenth-grade were 2.9, 3.6, 3.8, and 3.8 (FLDOE, 2004). The rising scores indicate that U.S. students’ writing competencies are certainly increasing. With Injustice For All “A” is for Accountability and Anxiety Under the NCLBA, all public schools are required to provide an annual report of their Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) to inform the nation, state, schools, parents, etc., of their performance. Districts and schools are held accountable if they continuously fail to demonstrate TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 8 improvement. Several consequences, or rewards, may follow. If the school fails for two consecutive years, then parents have the choice to send their child to another school that has shown progress. Transportation costs are charged to the school that failed (Botzakis, 2004, p. 7). Those schools that attain the standards are bestowed financial rewards proportionate to their students’ performance on the state assessment. Since the test scores are the principal data for the “report cards,” schools are striving for A’s—at whatever cost. Policymakers perceive the accountability movement as a means of challenging teachers to help students meet higher standards. Indeed, teachers are challenged—to teach against their principles. Before entering the classroom, they may have envisioned applying their teaching philosophies into practice. However, the mounting pressure from their state government, school district, and school administration may cause them to surrender to “teaching to the test.” Rubric Writing vs. Real Writing Teaching for mandated writing exams such as the FCAT Writing has only driven educators further away from teaching in accordance with their beliefs, and closer towards pleasing the government. Hammerness (2004) has demonstrated how the “externally imposed context of accountability shakes her [teachers’] confidence, shifts her curriculum, and shapes her learning about her teaching, her students and her school” (p. 33). Teachers notice drastic changes in their methods of teaching writing. In the current era of standards and accountability, teachers are trading pedagogically sound writing instruction for A’s on their school report card. Standardized writing assessments such as the FCAT Writing use rubrics to evaluate students’ writing. While policymakers perceive rubrics as a reliable, valid, and efficient assessment tool for writing, teachers view them as a potential threat to the writing curriculum. Mabry (2004) validates teachers’ beliefs as she has argued, “Rubrics are designed to function as TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 9 scoring guidelines, but they also serve as arbiters of quality and agents of control. Moreover, the control is not limited to assessment episodes but influences curriculum choices, restricts pedagogical repertoires, and restrains student expression and understanding” (p. 678). Teachers are adapting or reducing their writing instruction as they scramble to prepare their students for the writing assessment. Sometimes this means omitting subjects from the curriculum, or emphasizing breadth instead of depth—creating a “watered-down” curriculum. To prepare for the writing tests, some teachers drill the notorious five-paragraph essay. Hillocks, English professor at the University of Chicago, has discovered that state-mandated writing tests have revitalized the traditional five-paragraph essay at the expense of authentic expression (Manzo, 2001, p. 1). Many teachers are replacing meaningful writing activities with trite activities fueled by prompts. Fu (2000) has warned that, “Writing solely from prompts makes school writing irrelevant to real life and never allows students to write for their own expression or real communication” (p. 36). In the short run, students may be somewhat prepared to meet the challenge on test day, but in the long run, the affects could be devastating. If children do not understand the purposes for writing and are not bestowed with experiences that allow them to write for pleasure and purpose, then students will lose motivation to write and stagnate as writers. Process Writing: Teaching Students Based on What Works Since the 1980’s the view on writing instruction has shifted from a product-centered approach to a process-centered approach. Smith (2000) has reported that “Today, the five-step approach to the writing process is widely accepted: Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Editing, and Publishing” (para. 5). Direct writing assessments, however, are negating the process-centered perspective. The Writing Process Theory centers on the processes of writing as opposed to the TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 10 product. Students who learn to write through the writing process learn to think before they form their writing. Through the process, they engage in drafting, revision, peer and teacher conferring, editing, and publishing. When teachers “teach towards the rubric,” they rarely focus on revision, conferring, editing, or publishing. The FCAT Writing—and all other direct writing assessments—disregard these processes and focus solely on the first draft. Teachers and opponents of direct writing assessments argue that the tests are not fair representations of how well students can write. Many writing tests give prompts, where students are required to respond accordingly within a given time frame. Mabry (1999) has said that “spiritless and bland” prompts may cause students to lose motivation to write (p. 675). The prompt from the 2002 SAT writing section was, “There is always a however” (Paul, 2002, p. 33). Inane prompts such as these deny students the opportunity to exhibit their true proficiency, and encourage students to produce vacuous writing—bereft of life and purpose. Reliability at the Cost of Validity Rubrics may promote reliability, but simultaneously undermine validity. Holistic scoring methods may create the appearance of a valid test, but when an overall score is the result of combining sub-scores of components, the score becomes a product of analytic scoring. Attending to criteria denoted by a rubric rather than to the aspects of students’ work can yield unreliable scores, leading to invalid inferences regarding student achievement (Mabry, 1999). Furthermore, Mabry (1999) has refuted policymakers claim that direct writing assessments are reliable. She has stated, “Consistency is not achieved because rubrics provide a vehicle for expressing naturally occurring agreement. That is, rubrics improve inter-rater reliability partly by directing all scorers to judge student writing according to the same few criteria, a sameness that encourages agreement in score” (p. 675). Predetermined criteria and TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 11 common standards do not leave space for creative self-expression, which is the core of competent writing. Rubrics restrict scorers to evaluate only those strengths identified by the rubric. Innovation and eloquence may be ignored to attend to focus or organization. Commitment to Students Pre-service teachers anticipate transmitting their pedagogical theories into practice in their future classrooms, but may not consider the obstacles that could thwart their endeavors. In the current era of standards and accountability, educators must carefully consider whether they are engaging in pedagogical practices—whether they are teaching with justice for all. Teachers must resist the urge to surrender to standardized tests. They have the power to mold the writing curriculum in such a way that their students will become lifelong writers. Flowers and Hayes (1981) have asserted that process writing is the most effective approach to writing instruction (Fleischman and Unger, p. 90). Teachers should provide their students with purposeful activities instead of rote grammar drills, and grant students topic choice instead of trite prompts. Teachers have a commitment to educate their students about the art of writing, not just writing for the rubric. For there to be reforms in assessment practices, educators—and all those who are stakeholders in the educational system—must continually rethink, revise, and reinvent what is currently deemed as assessment. Calkins (1994) has mentioned that “Some teachers still teach language arts . . . in a frontal, teacher-led fashion with pretests, post-tests . . . and activities. This teaching is supported both by standardized tests and by the practice of accumulating lots of little scores in gradebooks” (p. 311). All teachers must align their students’ needs with the goals of the writing curriculum—a curriculum like the one Fleischman and Unger (2004) envision: “Teachers implement such practices as conducting writers’ workshops, having students complete TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 12 multiple drafts of their papers, holding frequent individual and small-group conferences with students, and encouraging peer review of written products” (p. 90). They must invent new and dynamic methods of teaching and assessing students. These aforementioned practices are central to the writing process, and to a pedagogically sound writing curriculum. Final Thoughts By increasing the expectations of our nation’s students, President Bush hopes that schools and teachers will tackle the challenge head-on—ensuring a quality education for all students and dispelling America’s image of “a nation at risk.” However, teachers are struggling to meet the demands of educational policymakers and like-minded affiliates. Standardized writing assessments have drastically changed the writing curriculum. Mabry (1999) notes that “Contemporary critics have condemned the tests for bias, distortion of curriculum, misalignment with current learning theory and best practice in pedagogy, misallocation of educational resources, deprofessionalization of teachers, demoralization of students, and entrenchment of social and political inequities” (p. 675). Many teachers have focused more on “teaching to the test” rather than teaching to their beliefs. As a result, students have been wading in a sea of meaningless, trite, over-structured drill-and-practice, prompted exercises. Direct writing assessments have evolved into living, breathing entities—sucking the writing curriculum dry, tempting teachers to commit pedagogical treason, and annihilating the creativity and motivation from students’ able hearts and minds. TEACHING WRITING IN AN ERA 13 References Baldwin, D. (2004). A guide to standardized writing assessment. Educational Leadership, 62(2), 72-75. Botzakis, S. (2004). No child left behind? To whom are we accountable? Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(4), 7-13. Calkins, L. M. (1994). The art of teaching writing (New ed.). Ontario: Irwin Publishing. Cavanagh, S. (2004). Bush takes on critics of no child left behind act. Education Week, 23(37), 28-31. Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2004/05/19/37bush.h23.html Cheung, M. (2003). More kids have write stuff. CBS News. 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