Writing Proficiency

Overview MUSWA PowerPoint A Practical Guide to Writing Proficiency Scoring Rubric

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Professional Development in Writing

The Montana Writing Summit will be held at the Colonial Inn in Helena, September 23-25.  The Summit, sponsored by the University of Montana Helena and the Montana Association of Teachers of English Language Arts, will feature speakers and sessions on writing instruction, assessment, research, and college-readiness standards.  A Sunday evening social, Wine, Writing, and Semiotics, offering an enticing seminar on real-world writing will conclude with wine-tasting. 

Monday’s banquet speaker will be Kathleen Blake Yancey, co-editor of Assessing Writing and award-winning author.  Tuesday’s luncheon speaker will be Dr. Carol Jago, author of numerous books and articles, including With Rigor for All and the Introduction to the Common Core’s ELA Maps.  Including Montana’s own Beverly Ann Chin, who will speak on the MUSWA Legacy, the Summit will feature three past NCTE presidents.  The Summit will be packed with breakout sessions focused on evidence-based practices in the teaching of writing.  To present at the Summit, please submit this Proposal Form (click here). To register, complete the form in the Summit Brochure.

MUSWA Completes Twelfth Year

The 2012 average MUS Writing Assessment score was 3.8, slightly down from 3.9 in 2011.  In 2012, 7,490 students earned MUSWA scores and 131 high schools voluntarily participated in this testing program.  Writing Assessment Workshops attracted 287 scorers to eight regional writing workshops.  In 2012, 74.1% of all students taking the MUSWA (including those with and without college plans) earned scores of 3.5 or above, indicating college-ready writing, compared to 37.8% a proficiency level in 2001.  For all word-processed tests the average score was 3.8; 5,936 of which were submitted online and 1,334 were word-processed papers submitted in booklets.  This year, 1,282 more tests were submitted online than in 2011.  Only 166 (2%) tests were handwritten, with an average score of 3.6.

 MUSWA evolved from a field test managed by ACT, to an integral part of the culture of many of Montana’s high schools.  Students, who were in the first grade in 2001 when 73 high schools began the MUSWA journey, graduated this year. A generation of students either looked forward to demonstrating their writing skills to anonymous scorers and or dreaded the day that they would be on their own with a prompt and a blank screen.   In recent years, about 75% of Montana’s participating high school students proved their writing was “proficient.”  The Evolution of MUSWA describes this journey.   Now, that journey ends with the introduction of funding to provide ACT Plus Writing to all of Montana’s juniors.  The Montana Writing Summit is designed to ensure a successful transition from the MUSWA to ACT’s writing test.    

Remediation Rates in Composition Show Dramatic Decline

While the rest of the country frets over remediation rates, the preparation levels of Montana's recent high school graduates have been improving. Over the past ten years, the MUSWA has worked with hundreds of high school teachers to improve readiness for college English, resulting in a decline in remediation rates in college composition from 15% in 2005 to 8% in 2011. (Remediation rates in composition are lower than those in mathematics.  For more detail, go to: http://mus.edu/data/briefs/Remediation-One-pager.pdf.)

POLICY

Montana’s two-year and four-year campuses use the highest writing score from the MUSWA, ACT Optional Writing Test, or SAT Essay to determine if students have demonstrated writing proficiency for placement into college-level composition and full admission to the four-year campuses.  Students who meet the proficiency threshold for admission are exempted from taking a placement exam on campus during freshman orientation.  Students who score below 3.5 on the MUSWA are provisionally admitted and placed into developmental courses unless they challenge their placement by taking another placement test.  See policies on the sidebar.

The Writing Proficiency Policy (Part I.C. of Policy 301.1):

• Informs high school juniors if they are on target to enter a freshman composition course that is developmental or a composition course that will count toward core or degree requirements;
  
  
• Ensures that students take the developmental course they need during their first year in college; and
  
  
• Identifies students who need more intensive writing instruction as high school seniors in order to graduate at the “proficient” level in writing.

In November, 2007, the Board of Regents passed a Composition Placement Policy, which brings consistency to the placement practices on the MUS campuses and allows students to use their score on the MUSWA, ACT, or SAT to be placed into credit-bearing, college-level composition courses.  See Policy 301.17 for details.

The National Scene

Writing Proficiency has become a national issue, as described in The Neglected "R", The Need for a Writing Revolution. To address this issue and help schools improve their writing programs, the Montana University System has studied this issue in depth by administering the Montana University System Writing Assessment. An alignment document describes how the scoring rubric was developed to reflect Montana's Writing Content Standards.  More recently, governors and state school superintendents have developed a common core of state standards in English-language arts and mathematics.  These Common Core State Standards are closely matched to the purpose and scoring rubric of the MUS Writing Assessment.

Many colleges and universities require that students submit a writing assessment score for admission.  The following campuses, frequently chosen by Montana graduates, now require either the ACT with writing or the SAT:  University of Washington, Washington State University, Oregon State University, Stanford University, University of Puget Sound, Harvard University, Portland State University, University of Southern California, Willamette University, Whitman College, New York University, Boston University, University of California, Princeton University, Yale University, Northwestern University, and Dickinson State University.

The newsletter archive contains tables, graphs, and charts with statistical analysis of MUS Writing Assessment results since 2001. It is noteworthy that inter-rater reliability has been high throughout the project, calculated at .86 (Cronbach's alpha). Intensive training and consistent application of the scoring rubric helps achieve this inter-rater reliability rate.

Student Assistance
WEBwriters, funded by the Student Assistance Foundation of Montana, supports the development of writing skills by helping students prepare for and improve their scores on the Montana University System Writing Assessment. The website, hosted at Montana State University Great Falls College of Technology can be found at http://webwriters.msugf.edu. Trained scorers are invited to sign contracts describing their duties and stipends as webscorers. Webwriters accepts practice essays from Montana students throughout the school year.

ACT's website also provides assistance in teaching the persuasive essay. See http://www.act.org/aap/writing/highschool/download.html (click on "ACT Assessment at a Glance").

Teachers from Helena High School have developed a website with resources and ideas for teaching the persuasive essay, http://www.hhs.helena.k12.mt.us/Teacherlinks/Oconnorj/persuasion.html.

For more information on the Montana Writing Proficiency Admissions Standards, please contact Jan Clinard, Ed.D.