Virginia eighth-graders fared no better on a 2007 U.S. Department of Education writing assessment than five years ago, but still edged out the national average, according to a report released Thursday.
The sample of 2,631 students from 108 Virginia schools did not follow the overall improvement seen across the country on the National Assessment of Educational Progress writing assessment.
Nationally, 88 percent of eighth-graders demonstrated writing at or above the basic level, 3 percent more than in 2002.
Ninety percent of Virginia students ranked at that level in last year’s assessment, and their overall scores were also higher.
“We’re certainly pleased to see that our students continue to do better than the national average in writing,” said Charles Pyle, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Education. “However, it’s been flat since 2002, and we saw some gains across the country that weren’t reflected in the results here in Virginia.”
The tests required short writing samples on a topic within a limited amount of time. In one case, test takers were asked to write a description of a backpack to a fictional student new to America.
Students at the “basic” level were likely to demonstrate “control over sentence boundaries” and offer some details, though “their sentence structure and word choice were often simple and unvaried,” according to the U.S. Department of Education report.
The 31 percent of Virginia students who ranked “at or above proficient” were likely to develop clearly organized essays with varied sentences, but occasionally missed transitions, the report said.
“We’re going to take a very close look at these results and all of the related data and see what the next steps are,” Pyle said.
