The Common Core Writing Standards: A Descriptive Study of Content and Alignment with A Sample of Former State Standards

Many students do not meet expected standards of writing performance, despite the need for writing competence in and out of school. As policy instruments, writing content standards have an impact on what is taught and how students perform. This study reports findings from an evaluation of the content of a sample of seven diverse states’ current writing standards compared to content of the Common Core State Standards for writing and language (CCSS-WL). Standards were evaluated for breadth of content coverage (range), how often content was referenced (frequency), the degree of emphasis placed on varied content elements (balance), and the degree of overlap between one set of standards and another (alignment). The study addressed two research questions: (1) What is the nature of the CCSS-WL and the sample states’ standards for writing with respect to content breadth, frequency, and balance? (2) To what degree do the states\u27 writing standards align with the CCSS-WL? Results indicated that CCSS-WL are succinct and balanced, with breadth of coverage in some aspects of writing but not others. The seven states’ standards represented varying degrees of breadth, frequency, and balance with few patterns across states. None of the states’ standards had strong alignment with CCSS-WL, indicating a potential mismatch between prior curricular materials and instructional methods developed with former standards as guides to help students meet grade-level writing expectations in the new CCSS

Fifth-grade students' knowledge about writing process and writing genres

The purpose of this study was to determine what students know about the process of writing and the characteristics of stories, persuasive arguments, and informational reports. Participants were 50 grade 5 students. Students responded to questions about writing process and the three different types of writing, and showed a nuanced but relatively unsophisticated understanding of the processes underlying writing and the characteristics of three types of writing. Most of their responses centered on procedures for writing and drafting texts as well as obtaining and organizing information for writing. They described each writing genre by referring to elements specific to it, but these descriptions were not complete for any of the three types of writing. Results of regression analyses revealed that students' knowledge about substantive writing processes predicted how much they knew about each type of writing after gender, writing achievement, and emphasis on production procedures during writing were first controlled statistically

Teaching composing to students with learning disabilities: Scientifically supported recommendations

[Extract] Learning how to write well is not an easy task. This fact was illustrated in the most recent national assessment of students’ writing. Two out of every three students in grades 4, 8, and 12 did not write well enough to meet expected grade-level demands (Persky, Daane, & Jin, 2003). Difficulties in mastering writing are even more pronounced for students with learning disabilities (LD), as they experience problems with multiple aspects of the composing process, including setting goals for writing, generating and organizing ideas, transforming ideas into acceptable sentences, transcribing these sentences onto paper, revising and editing text, creating fully developed papers, and sustaining the writing process (Graham & Harris, 2003, 2005; Troia, 2006)