8th-Graders Show Some Improvement as Writers

Although they are gradually improving, most California eighth-grade students are fair-to-barely adequate writers. They are slightly stronger in the complex thinking skills needed to write a coherent essay than they are in the basic mechanics of spelling and grammar. Eighth-grade girls are substantially better writers overall than eighth-grade boys.

This was the profile of eighth-grade writing ability for the 1987-88 academic year that emerged from test results released Monday by the state Department of Education.

The California writing exam, which the state has administered for the past two years, asks students to write one of six specific types of essays, such as an autobiographical sketch or an informative report. Educators consider it superior to the multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank type of standardized test that the state still uses to measure third- and sixth-graders’ writing ability.

“Teachers are incorporating writing into the curriculum across the board,” state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig said Monday. “Although we still have a long way to go, these results show that our efforts are paying off.”

Last spring, 271,168 eighth-graders took the writing exam. Each student was given 45 minutes to write an essay on an assigned topic. Each exam was given a score from 1 to 6, which state officials translated into a schoolwide scaled score running from about 100 to 400. Because the test is designed to give a school an overall view of how well its students are writing, the state does not provide individual student scores.

Statewide, the average score rose 6 points in the 1987-88 school year, from 250 to 256. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the average score was 208, one point lower than the previous year’s 209.

Sixty-two percent of the state’s eighth-graders wrote adequate or marginally adequate essays, earning scores in the 3-to-4 range, state figures showed. Twelve percent wrote impressively, scoring in the 5-to-6 range, and 22% wrote poorly, in the 1-to-2 range.

Continuing a pattern from the previous year, girls scored an average of 280 points, compared to 232 for boys. State education officials say that girls typically demonstrate stronger verbal ability than boys on standardized tests until about the 10th grade, when the disparity disappears.

Of the six types of writing measured, students wrote informative reports most competently, said Beth Breneman, a language arts consultant in the state testing program. They had the greatest difficulty with persuasive writing--specifically, in essays requiring evaluation and problem-solving.

Los Angeles Unified’s eighth-graders wrote better problem-solving and informational essays than they did autobiographical and evaluative essays. Many educators nationally consider the California exam to be state-of-the-art. According to the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based education clearinghouse, the majority of the 22 states that test students’ writing used the California exam as their model.

Because thousands of essays must be read, scoring is a laborious process, state officials said. Last year, 384 teachers in six locations around the state spent six days grading the essays.

Sarah Maggard, an eighth-grade teacher at Alvarado Intermediate School in Rowland Heights, said she has seen an improvement in her students’ writing ability in the last two years.

“Filling in the blanks does not let someone know whether a student can put everything together and write,” she said. “Now we’re writing more and our expectations are higher in terms of the finished product. We’re seeing more polished writing.”

Theresa Gallagher, an eighth-grade teacher at Bell Gardens Intermediate School in the Montebello Unified School District, said that the test is valuable because it measures “the kind of writing we are asked to produce in everyday living.”