Constructs of writing proficiency in U.S. state and national writing assessments: Exploring variability

Abstract

Persistent gaps between optimistic state and pessimistic national academic performance assessment results

are increasingly leading to calls for unified national standards in the US. Critics argue that these gaps reveal

vast differences in how proficiency is conceptualized; however, little is known about how conceptualizations compare among large-scale US assessments. To explore this issue, the present study investigated constructs of writing proficiency implicated in 41 US state and national high school direct writing assessments by analyzing the relationships between prompt-genre demands and assessment scoring criteria. Results of this analysis suggest that national writing assessments differ as a group from state assessments in the extent to which they emphasize genre distinctions and present coherent conceptualizations of writing proficiency. The implications of these assessment variations for college preparedness are discussed.