Overview

Fear and Trembling? Shock and Awe? Which set of statements best describes the emotions surrounding the assessment of writing ability in educational settings? This book - the first historical study of its kind - begins with Harvard University's 1874 requirement that first-year student applicants submit a short composition as part of the admissions process; the book concludes with the College Board's 2005 requirement for an essay to be submitted as part of the new SAT(R): Reasoning Test. Intended for teachers who must prepare students to submit their writing for formal assessment, administrators who must make critical decisions based on test scores, and policy makers who must allocate resources based on evaluation systems, On a Scale provides a much-needed historical and conceptual background to questions arising from national attention to student writing ability.

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9780820427782

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« Norbert Elliot's 'On A Scale' is a timely treatment of one of today's hot-test educational issues -- writing assessment. Elliot provides superb historical background, demonstrating how the testing of writing has always been fraught with difficulty in attaining reliability and validity. Today's teachers and scholars will benefit from Elliot's careful examination of all the sources, including his valuable look at the ETS archives. In an impressively researched volume, Elliot presents the best single overview of the topic, a book that is sure to become the definitive work on its subject.

Author Information

The Author: Norbert Elliot is Professor of English at New Jersey Institute of Technology.

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