V's Pick #23: Teaching & Assessing Writing by Edward White

This book spawned a very long email to my department about the exam a few months ago. I will admit, as a first time teacher, assessment has been my weak point, or rather, the place where I feel I need the most instruction and rationale.

White provided some of that for me and most starkly, he talked about all the reasons exams like the one I was studying for while reading him, are neither valid or reliable.

I was on fire with conflict. Wait, you mean to tell me you assigned me this book to study for this exam and in it, I am learning just how wrong these exams are in measuring writing skill?

The email made me nervous - I wasn't sure who would be grading me or if my objections would hurt my future, but I had to share them. If I've learned anything in this program it's to think more critically and part of that to me, means speaking up when things aren't right.
Lucky for me, the email was received in good favor and passed on to the people who needed to hear it. It was agreed that the exam is not the perfect measurement of aptitude, but unlike the Lit programs' Capstone course, we in the Rhet/Comp field just have to wait for a better approach to come along. I made me peace with it obviously but the fact remains that comprehensive tests - for placement, admission and measurement are rife with problems. For those of you who teach any course that involves the grading of writing, I would highly, highly recommend this book. It's lengthy but an pretty easy read and it taught me more about assessment than anything else I've read. Prior to White, I never thought about needed to "test our tests"...