Summative writing assessment
Make it the last step not the last straw

Summative writing assessment, better known as grading papers, is the last step in teaching writing. It is also sometimes called terminal assessment, which sounds far too ominous for my taste.

Negative consequences of grades

Many people have serious issues with the notion of assigning a grade to student writing. These folks say such things as:

• There is too much emphasis on grades and too little on learning.

• No single grade accurately sums up a student's writing skill.

• Writing is a process as well as a product so the grade should show how well the student mastered the writing process.

• Grades don't tell how well a person writes.

Each of those is a valid argument. Yet despite that, I'm a confirmed paper grader for a couple of reasons.

Reasons for grading writing

One reason I am a confirmed paper grader is that schools aren't going to get rid of grades in favor of portfolios, narrative transcripts, or multimedia projects. Grades are simply too convenient a way of making rough comparison between people.

The other reason I am a paper grader is that I believe teachers can develop writing assessment procedures that overcome the negative consequences of grades to a significant degree.

You are welcome to question, disagree, argue, or suggest a superior summative assessment method for writing at the writing assessment forum.

Summative assessment strategies

Summative assessment of writing skill should begin with clear objectives for the course or year. Objectives for a lesson or even a unit won't work. You can expose students to a concept or writing strategy in a lesson but they don't begin to develop writing skill in anything under a half year of practice in the writing process.

Word your objectives so writing achievement is determined by more than one assessment. I set my standard for writing competence at three essays in a row. Among other things, the three-in-a-row standard considerably reduces the likelihood of students getting someone else to do their work.

When institutional standards permit, I guarantee a C to any student who meets my writing objective regardless of what else he/she did or will do the rest of the course. That means work the students messed up before they wrote three competent paper in a row is treated as a formative assessment: it is not included in a calculation of a final grade.

Even if students do stop working after they achieve competence, they are not going to drop back to D- minus writers. Once people are competent at a skill, they don't become incompetent again. Incidentally, I've never had anyone stop working once they earned the C.

What a final writing grade means

The grade you assign as the result of your summative assessment of student's writing should sum up the student's writing proficiency.

In other words, a grade of B should mean the student writes at the B level as defined by your objectives and/or your institutional standards.

It should not mean "I figured I didn't teach well because nobody in the class did very well so I raised everybody's grade."

I save myself time by looking first at a student's last three essay grades. Let's suppose all three are in the B range. In that case, I ignore earlier work and calculate a grade based on the three-in-a-row.

If the last three grades aren't all in the same letter range, I calculate the final grade by adding up all the scores earned after the student achieved competence and dividing by the number of scores.

My summative writing assessment strategy isn't perfect, but I think it avoids most of the negative aspects of more traditional assessment strategies.