1 in 4 U.S. Students Has Proficiency in Writing

The most comprehensive assessment of how well American students can write shows that only about one in four has the level of proficiency needed for success in school or future jobs, the U.S. Department of Education reported Tuesday.

California students as a whole fell below the national average and, more disturbing, trailed such states as Texas and New York--comparably large states with dense urban areas and similarly diverse populations.

The report, released by the Education Department’s National Assessment of Educational Progress, is based on writing tests administered to representative samples of students in the 4th-, 8th- and 12th- grades in both public and private schools across the nation, some 60,000 in all. In addition, the assessment for the first time tested another 100,000 eighth-grade students in 35 participating states, as well as the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands and schools operated by the Defense Department, to allow state-by-state comparisons.

Ten states, led by Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and the Pentagon schools, scored above the national average. And 17 states, predominantly in the South, Southwest and West, fell below it.

As in an earlier assessment of reading, girls substantially outscored boys in all three grade levels tested. So large was the gender gap that twice as many girls as boys placed in the two top writing categories.

Also following the pattern of other educational assessments, Asian/Pacific Island students performed better than whites, and both groups outperformed blacks and Latinos. Students from poor families and those whose parents had limited formal education also trailed.

“This is a cry for much-needed improvement for all students to raise their writing skills,” said Christopher T. Cross, president of the Council for Basic Education, a nonprofit advocacy group for higher educational standards. “These discrepancies are an indication of our failure to teach writing.”

“The average or typical American student is not a proficient writer,” added Gary W. Phillips, acting head of the Education Department’s National Center for Educational Statistics. “Instead, students show only partial mastery of the knowledge and skills needed for solid academic performance in writing.”

Delaine Eastin, California’s superintendent of public instruction, said her state’s poor showing “underscores the need for a much stronger statewide focus on writing.” She said that the state’s focus on standard tests that do not include writing samples may have led teachers to neglect the subject.

Marilyn Whirry, a member of the National Assessment Governing Board and an English teacher in Manhattan Beach, attributed much of California’s weak showing to the influx of inexperienced teachers as a result of class size reduction and growing student populations, especially in urban areas such as Los Angeles. A consultant who conducts frequent writing workshops for teachers, Whirry said that class size reduction should give teachers more time to help individual students, but “we have huge numbers of teachers coming into classrooms without any preparation. . . . They haven’t been taught how to teach writing.”

Richard Sterling, executive director of the National Writing Project, a federally funded teacher-training program based at UC Berkeley, praised the Education Department’s decision to focus on writing, saying that “it is a crucial, crucial skill--more in demand than 20 years ago.”

The department conducted a more limited writing study in 1992 that also suggested relatively few students have the well-developed skills needed for success as they continue their educations and move into the workplace. But the earlier tests were so different that the findings are not comparable with the new findings, officials said.

As a result, the new assessment, based on testing conducted in February 1998, is likely to become the benchmark against which future writing surveys are measured, just as National Assessment of Educational Progress’ studies of reading, math and science achievement are the most widely accepted measures of national achievement in those fields.

Though the form of the new tests varied with different grades, most students were given 25 minutes each for two assignments designed to measure three kinds of writing: narrative, informative and persuasive.

States were allowed to participate only if a large and representative proportion of their schools agreed to take part and steps were taken to prevent states from padding their scores by excluding weak schools, national assessment officials said.

About 60% of students demonstrated what was euphemistically called “basic” skills, defined as partial mastery of fundamental writing techniques. Students scoring in the basic range fell short of the skill levels needed for success in school or the workplace.

These students showed a rudimentary ability to convey a point or idea--comparable to social chit-chat, one official said. But they failed to develop or explain their points coherently and made frequent errors in grammar, spelling and sentence structure.

About 18% of students in the national sample fell below even the basic level.

By contrast, just under 25% of students tested were classified as “proficient” writers, demonstrating the skill level tha testing officials say all students need to achieve future success. Only about 1% were rated “advanced,” the highest classifications.

“It is clear from the report that many students are able to write at a basic, minimally effective level, but far too few can produce strong, coherent prose,” said Whirry, who teaches at Mira Costa High School.

The writing of more than half of the students tested in California--56%--fell into the basic category.

And 24% of the state’s students scored below the basic level of minimal competence, compared with an average of 18% nationally. Only three states had larger percentages of students in that bottom category.

Writing weakness was especially evident among California children who qualify for free or reduced-price lunches under federal guidelines or whose parents dropped out of high school. In those categories, California’s score was the worst among states.

Officials of the California Department of Education pointed out that 13% of California participants had limited English skills, while only 2% had such limits nationally. Still, California has larger than average numbers of Asian/Pacific Island students, whose generally better performance should have tended to raise the state’s scores.

At the national level, neither government officials nor other experts had a ready explanation for the gender gap in writing skills, but several noted that it closely parallels the gap in reading skills. Lawrence W. Feinberg, assistant director of the National Assessment’s governing board, noted that officials found 36% of eighth-grade girls scoring at the proficient level, compared with only 17% of boys.

In reading, the 1998 assessment reported 40% of eighth-grade girls and only 27% of boys working at the proficient level.

In math and science, boys have shown a small advantage over girls, but Feinberg said that gap has narrowed over the years as greater effort has been made to draw girls into the subjects and help them excel. The gender gap in reading, on the other hand, has remained virtually unchanged, he said.

As for what can be done to improve scores, officials noted that higher marks on the tests were associated with students who in their classroom work planned in advance what would be written, did more than one draft, discussed writing assignments with teachers, kept a portfolio of their work and used computers.

Cooper reported from Washington and Groves from Los Angeles.