About the Grade 8 Writing Assessment:
The Georgia Grade 8 Writing Assessment evaluates students’ response to an assigned prompt on either an expository or persuasive writing topic. The Expository writing style can be described as writing which provides an explanation or gives directions to the reader. The Persuasive writing style is designed to give an opinion in order to persuade or influence the reader’s thinking. The Grade 8 Writing Assessment is scored analytically, whereby more than one feature or domain of the paper is evaluated. Each response is scored in four domains: Ideas, Organization, Style, and Conventions.
Scores in each domain range from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest score). Domain scores are combined to obtain a total score for each student. In combining the domain scores, the Ideas score is given a weight of 40%; the other domains of Organization, Style, and Conventions are given a weight of 20% each. The total score is then converted to a three-digit scaled score. There are three performance levels represented: Does Not Meet (scores below 200), Meets (scores from 200-249), and Exceeds (scores of 250 and above).
Highlights from the January 2010 administration of the Grade 8 Writing Assessment:
- Sixty-eight percent of SCCPSS eighth graders met/exceeded standard on the Grade 8 Writing Assessment. This is an increase of 4 percentage points over last year.
- The percentage of students meeting/exceeding the standard at Ellis and Oglethorpe are at or above that of the State.
- Compared to last year, Myers Middle School increased the percentage of students meeting/exceeding the standard by 15 percentage points.
- The mean scale scores at Ellis and Oglethorpe are above that of the State.
- Mercer, Myers, Oglethorpe, Shuman and West Chatham show positive one year gains in their Mean Scale Scores.
Charts and Tables