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I found this piece from @MichaelPetrilli helpful in seeing the framework/heuristic "reformers" believe they're bringing to schools. It also illuminates why I think reform has been so off track when it comes to assessing writing. fordhaminstitute.org/national/comme… 1/
These graphs are the nut of the problem of writing assessment. They are focused on the product students produce, but to understand how students are developing as writers, we must know more about the process being employed in service of that product also... 2/ cc: @MichaelPetrilli 
...we need to know much more about what students know about their own process (what I call the "writer's practice" and how they're able to apply this practice to new and unfamiliar writing-related problems. What has been assessed by reformers doesn't do this 3/ @MichaelPetrilli
I wrote Why They Can't Write because I'd seen a generation (or two now) of students arrive in college with deeply disordered writing processes. They had a prescriptive method (5 PE) that they tried to apply to every occasion. 4/ @MichaelPetrilli
My students had no sense of the writer's practice, and almost no experience with writing as a tool by which we discover things and create knowledge. They'd only ever performed "writing-related simulations" explicitly designed to pass the accountability assessments. 5/
They'd also been harmed by cultures of pressure and surveillance and competition, which left them hesitant to take the kinds of risks learning to write requires. They feared failure, and therefore were not given space to explore ideas through writing. 6/ @MichaelPetrilli
I am on board with school reformers wanting to know what students are learning, but with writing, the have not spent nearly enough time understanding how its learned and how that learning is detected and built upon. The frame of "competency" is too low a bar. 7/@MichaelPetrilli
So I wrote Why They Can't Write and its been widely embraced by teachers who know things have been messed up and I've sent this book to every big time school reformer I can find and so far, it's been utterly ignored by that group. 8/ @MichaelPetrilli
This is, school reformers could get behind what's in the book if they're open to a different kind of assessment. @MichaelPetrilli's post shows we share the same values. Can they accept different methods? 9/
The Writer's Practice put developing writers on a path where they will understand writing in a way that allows them to tackle unfamiliar forms. The teachers who have been using it say it works great, for lots of different ages. amazon.com/Writers-Practi… @MichaelPetrilli
If any school reformer wants a thorough discussion of where we've gone wrong with teaching writing, check out Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities. I probably sent you one already, but I've got more. @MichaelPetrilli amazon.com/Why-They-Cant-…
