Earlier this month, the writing portion of the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE) was eliminated in order to save money and curtail budget cuts. This adjustment is expected to save the Illinois State Board of Education roughly $2.4 million in costs related to administering and scoring the writing assessment. Officials also hope this will curtail Gov. Pat Quinn’s proposed budget cuts for education, according to an ISBE spokeswoman.
Without the writing component, the annual two-day exam will continue to test students in reading, math, and science to assess if students and high schools are meeting Illinois Learning Standards. Writing assessments were first cut from standardized testing last year in the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT), taken by third through eighth graders. Writing tests are not required by the federal No Child Left Behind Law.
This week on Twitter, the National Writing Project (@writingproject) tweeted an argument to keep the writing section in the test. The editorial in the Chicago Tribune called "Write On!" mocks the writing skills of young people today. Sentences like, "No more swetting over topic sentances, subjekt-verb agremant, pursuasave argumints," make their point.
As an English Language Arts teacher, I agree that writing is "the best way we have to see how students think." Through writing, students demonstrate their ability to reason, to argue, to put ideas together, and to draw conclusions. While on the one hand, some educators argue that writing can and will still be taught in the year-long curriculum, others say, how can we when we're constantly balancing our activities with "teaching to the test"?
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