What Does the NAEP Writing Assessment Measure?
NAEP has measured the writing skills of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students; however, in 2007 the assessment was administered at grades 8 and 12 only. According to the NAEP Writing Framework, developed by the National Assessment Governing Board the NAEP writing assessment should have the following objectives:
- Students should write for a variety of purposes: narrative, informative, and persuasive.
- Narrative writing involves the production of stories or personal essays. The narrative topics in the assessment encourage writers to use their creativity and powers of observation to develop stories that can capture a reader's imagination.
- Informative writing communicates information to the reader to share knowledge or to convey messages, instructions, and ideas. The informative topics in the writing assessment required students to write on specified subjects in a variety of formats, such as reports, reviews, and letters.
- Persuasive writing seeks to influence the reader to take some action or bring about change. It may contain factual information, such as reasons, examples, or comparisons; however, its main purpose is not to inform, but to persuade. The persuasive topics in the writing assessment asked students to write letters to friends, newspaper editors, or prospective employers, as well as to refute arguments or take sides in a debate.
- Students should write on a variety of tasks and for many different audiences.
- The writing assessment prompts presented students with a variety of tasks, such as writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, offering advice to younger students, reporting to a school committee, and writing a story based on a poem.
- Students should write from a variety of stimulus materials.
- Some of the narrative topics in the NAEP writing assessment asked students to write stories in response to photographs, cartoons, or poems.
- Several of the informative topics asked students to respond to letters, cartoons, or articles.
- Many of the persuasive topics asked students to write in response to information provided with the assessment, such as newspaper articles, charts, photographs, and reported dialogues.
- Students should generate, draft, revise, and edit ideas and forms of expression in their writing.
- Each student participating in the assessment was given a brochure on planning and reviewing writing. The brochures offer numerous suggestions for getting started and revising writing. Students were also given special planning pages in their assessment booklets.
The writing framework specifies the distribution of questions by grade and writing purpose.
Sample Questions booklets for the writing assessment are available for download.
For more detailed information about the objectives of the writing assessment, explore the NAEP Writing Framework (469K PDF).
Last updated 29 January 2008 (RF)
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