What Does the NAEP Writing Assessment Measure?

NAEP typically measures the writing skills of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students, and the NAEP writing framework provides the theoretical basis for the assessment. The framework describes the types of skills that should be measured, the questions that should be included, and how the assessment should be designed and scored. As with all NAEP frameworks, the writing framework is developed under the guidance of the National Assessment Governing Board. View a copy of the 2007 NAEP Writing Framework (469K PDF).

The 2011 writing assessment will be based on a new framework. View a pre-publication edition of the NAEP Writing Framework (3,062K DOC) .

According to the 2007 NAEP writing framework, the NAEP writing assessment (administered only at grades 8 and 12 in 2007) was based on the following objectives:

• Students should write for a variety of purposes: narrative, informative, and persuasive.

• Narrative writing involves the production of stories or personal essays. The narrative topics in the assessment encourage writers to use their creativity and powers of observation to develop stories that can capture a reader's imagination.
• Informative writing communicates information to the reader to share knowledge or to convey messages, instructions, and ideas. The informative topics in the writing assessment require students to write on specified subjects in a variety of formats, such as reports, reviews, and letters.
• Persuasive writing seeks to influence the reader to take some action or bring about change. It may contain factual information, such as reasons, examples, or comparisons; however, its main purpose is not to inform, but to persuade. The persuasive topics in the writing assessment ask students to write letters to friends, newspaper editors, or prospective employers, as well as to refute arguments or take sides in a debate.

• Students should write on a variety of tasks and for many different audiences.

• The writing assessment prompts present students with a variety of tasks, such as writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper, offering advice to younger students, reporting to a school committee, and writing a story based on a poem.

• Students should write from a variety of stimulus materials.

• Some of the narrative topics in the NAEP writing assessment ask students to write stories in response to photographs, cartoons, or poems.
• Several of the informative topics ask students to respond to letters, cartoons, or articles.
• Many of the persuasive topics ask students to write in response to information provided with the assessment, such as newspaper articles, charts, photographs, and reported dialogues.

• Students should generate, draft, revise, and edit ideas and forms of expression in their writing.

• Each student participating in the assessment is given a brochure on planning and reviewing writing. The brochures offer numerous suggestions for getting started and revising writing. Students are also given special planning pages in their assessment booklets.

The writing framework specifies the distribution of questions by grade and writing purpose.

Sample Questions booklets for the writing assessment are available for download.

For more detailed information about the objectives of the writing assessment, explore the 2007 NAEP Writing Framework (469K PDF). To explore the objectives for the 2011 assessment, view a pre-publication edition of the NAEP Writing Framework (3,062K DOC) .