The Role of Curriculum Based Measures in Assessing Writing Products
Julie Elizabeth Dockrell, Vincent J. Connelly, Kirsty Walter, Sarah Critten · 2017
The ChallengeLiteracy, including writing, is a key gateway skill (Buchanan & Flouri, 2001).Failure to produce text quickly, legibly, and accurately results in poor educational achievements, reduced job opportunities, and reduced earning potential.Thus, the ability to produce written text, either manually or electronically, is a key transferable skill.The heightened awareness that "writing today is not a frill for the privileged few, but an essential skill for the many" (The National Commission on Writing, 2003, p. 11), coupled with the numbers of students challenged by writing and the complexity of the writing process, has called attention to the importance of using reliable and valid assessments of written text production (Bew, 2011).These assessments should capture the key components of written text production as children are learning to write (Berninger et al., 2002).Arguably such assessments should be timely and lead to targeted teaching or specific interventions that can be monitored (Saddler & Asaro-Saddler, 2013).Teachers need to be able to profile pupils' developing writing skills so appropriate action can be taken (Fuchs & Fuchs, 2009).To date, studies of writing development and the ways in which writing products are assessed have been relatively neglected (Miller & McCardle, 2011).This chapter considers the assessment of children's written texts by exploring the use of curriculum-based measures of writing (cbm-w).We draw on data from children in English primary schools (Dockrell, Connelly, Walter & Critten, 2015) to consider the extent to which such measures capture developmental differences and changes in writing skills over time (Fewster & MacMillan, 2002).Using these data, we also assess whether the cbm-w can accurately reflect the performance found on more time-consuming and complex standardized measures of written text, and finally, we consider if cbm-w can identify struggling writers.