Thursday, July 10, 2003 | 11:19 a.m.
SUN STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
WASHINGTON -- The nation's fourth graders and eighth graders have become better writers, but fewer 12th grade students can convey well-organized ideas, a new national assessment shows.
Even the signs of improvement must be considered in context: Most students in the three benchmark grades still can't provide coherent answers with clear language, supporting details, accurate punctuation and creative thinking.
The new report provides a sense of how well students can write essays, communicate information and compose arguments -- skills considered essential for success in college and the workplace, yet some educators say writing has become the forgotten fundamental.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the nation's report card, charts student achievement and how it changes. It is the latter measure -- changes since the last writing test in 1998 -- that offers some good news, results released Thursday show.
Students in fourth and eighth grade showed significant strides in being able to handle challenging writing assignments and applying knowledge to real-life situations.
A range of 26 percent to 29 percent of students hit that mark, known as proficiency, which is considered the standard for all students. Last time, 22 percent to 25 percent of students achieved that level.
Also in those two grades, more students reached at least a basic level, which means they could get their point across with at least some effectiveness. The average writing scores increased for whites, blacks and Hispanics in the fourth and eighth grades.
"The nation's children are writing better, which is indeed encouraging news," said Education Secretary Rod Paige.
But Paige acknowledged: "We still have to find creative ways to encourage our high school seniors."
In Nevada, 17 percent of the state's fourth graders who were tested passed, and 15 percent of the eighth graders tested showed proficiency in writing. That put the Silver State near the bottom of the national rankings. The District of Columbia finished last, with just 11 percent of fourth graders and 10 percent of eighth graders demonstrating proficiency on the writing test.
This is the first year the writing test has been given to fourth graders nationwide.
The assessment tests were given in Nevada to 3,474 fourth graders at 114 elementary schools and 2,582 eighth graders at 64 middle schools. The number of schools in Clark County that participated was not available.
The schools were chosen based on the percentage of students who qualify for free and reduced meals, the ethnic mix of the population and the economic makeup of the surrounding community.
Nevada also gives its own writing test each year as part of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. On the October 2002 exam, 25.5 percent of Clark County fourthgraders passed the exam. At the eighth grade level, 47 percent of those tested passed.
"We know we have work to do," said Agustin Orci, deputy superintendent of instruction for the Clark County School District. "We're making gains in the lower grades thanks to our increased emphasis on reading. But where we really fall down is in the middle school years. We're trying to figure out why those drops in achievements are occurring so that we can really tackle the problem."
The national writing exam differs significantly from the state test both in content and design, said John Hawk, a member of the Nevada Board of Education. On the national test, students are encouraged to practice with past exam questions and teachers are urged to teach the material. For the state Iowa exam, "teaching to the test" is discouraged, Hawk said. "If our students are going to improve their performance, then the teachers need to be informed on the kinds of things that are on the exam and those concepts need to be embedded into our regular curriculum," Hawk said this morning.
On the national test, the average test score for seniors dropped slightly since 1998; what's worse, the proportion of 12th-graders who wrote at a basic level dropped from 57 percent to 51 percent.
That means about half of seniors, within a 25-minute time limit, could not provide an organized answer that showed they understand their task and their audience.
"By the time students graduate high school, they should be able to produce more than disorganized self-expression or Internet chat," said Marilyn Whirry, former national teacher of the year and a member of the board that oversees the national assessment.
"It is the responsibility of every teacher to lead students in their struggle to become writers."
The declining performance among seniors has become a trend across topics, as 12th grade scores have also dropped in reading, math and science in recent years.
In writing, students were given a range of assignments, from writing a letter to a newspaper editor to composing a tale about a character with superhuman ability. The sophistication of the questions grew by grade, as did the expectations of graders, who watched for content, organization, sentence structure, grammar, spelling and punctuation.
Overall, more than eight in 10 students wrote at a basic level or better. But the performance by the oldest students reflects a deep problem, said Gaston Caperton, president of The College Board, which oversees the college-entrance test known as the SAT.
The SAT will add an essay portion in 2005, and Caperton leads a national commission aimed at improving writing.
"I think the figures substantiate what we've said: Young people have got to learn to write," Caperton said.
More than 275,000 students in almost 11,000 public and private schools took the voluntary writing tests last year.
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