As a result of the Japanese Ministry of Education's recent edict that students' written and spoken English should be assessed in university entrance exams, there is an urgent need for tools to help teachers and students prepare for these exams. Although some commercial tools already exist, they are generally expensive and inflexible. To address…

This article describes and theorizes a failed writing program assessment study to question the influence of "the rhetoric of agreement," or reliability, on writing assessment practice and its prevalence in validating institutional mandated assessments. Offering the phrase "dwelling in disagreement" as a queer perspective, the…

Alternative approaches are discussed for use of e-rater[R] to score the TOEFL iBT[R] Writing test. These approaches involve alternate criteria. In the 1st approach, the predicted variable is the expected rater score of the examinee's 2 essays. In the 2nd approach, the predicted variable is the expected rater score of 2 essay responses by the…

The NTID Writing Test was developed to assess the writing ability of postsecondary deaf students entering the National Technical Institute for the Deaf and to determine their appropriate placement into developmental writing courses. While previous research (Albertini et al., 1986; Albertini et al., 1996; Bochner, Albertini, Samar, & Metz, 1992)…

The Test of Written Language-2, for use with students ages 7-17, identifies low achievement, determines strengths and weaknesses, and documents progress. The test assesses three language components (conventional, linguistic, and conceptual) using two formats (contrived and spontaneous.) This paper describes the test's administration, scoring,…

Specialists in the field of large-scale, high-stakes writing assessment have, over the last forty years alternately discussed the issue of maximizing either reliability or validity in test design. Factors complicating the debate--such as Messick's (1989) expanded definition of validity, and the ethical implications of testing--are explored. An…

Writing teachers and educators can add to information from large-scale testing and teachers can strengthen classroom assessment by creating a tight fit between large-scale testing and classroom assessment. Across the years, large-scale testing programs have struggled with a difficult problem: how to evaluate student writing reliably and…

The Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised is a set of tests designed to measure cognitive abilities, scholastic aptitude, and achievement in the areas of reading, mathematics, and written language, in individuals aged 2-95 years. This paper describes the test battery's administration, scoring, standardization, reliability, and…