Since 1979, New York State has been working on an instrument to evaluate elementary school students' writing ability. Several thousand writing samples were obtained and were analyzed, by a test development committee consisting of elementary school teachers, qualitatively within each grade as high, average, and low, and in terms of organization and sentence construction, cohesion, vocabulary and spelling. Using these data, five categories of writing types that students in grade 5 could handle were developed. By the spring of 1982, the steering committee for the Elementary Writing Test had prepared 36 pretest items and criteria for rating the papers holistically. Ten test forms were field tested throughout the state. In the spring of 1983, the test will be administered to all students in grade 5. It will require two writing samples from each student. By this time, all fifth grade teachers will have been trained to rate student papers. Further study will be carried on during the first year of the test's administration. Use of this test will emphasize the importance of writing throughout the elementary grades, promote movement toward an articulated kindergarten through grade 12 writing program, and increase teacher and administrator awareness of the writing process. (Includes charts on criteria and score discrepancy resolution.) (JL)