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STEPHEN HEGARTYThe percentage of fourth-graders deemed proficient is among the best in the nation; eighth-graders also did well.
A decade after Florida began focusing on writing skills, the state's fourth-graders are among the nation's best young writers.
Florida had the fifth-highest percentage of fourth-graders writing proficiently, according to results of the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The state's eighth-graders ranked 11th.
Florida showed some of the biggest increases over time, and some of the biggest gains among minority students.
The scores, released Thursday, were touted by Education Commissioner Jim Horne as evidence that Florida's school reforms are working, and that the focus on writing skills is paying dividends.
Still, only a third of Florida's students are proficient writers. Proficiency is defined as solid academic performance appropriate for the grade level.
That means two-thirds are not proficient writers. Nevertheless, Florida is not accustomed to being ranked among the elite states, and that did not go unnoticed.
"The Florida results are quite impressive actually," said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner for the NAEP. "We have not seen gains like this from Florida before."
Carr said it's hard to put a finger on the cause of the gains, but surmised that the introduction of the statewide writing test a decade ago is showing results.
"The states that have shown the biggest gains are the ones who have been behind, and now they've been working on it," Carr said.
Horne had the same theory.
"These are the best scores that we've ever received on the NAEP," Horne said, attributing the improvement to the fact that "we've been at writing a little bit longer than reading and math."
Florida began its writing test - called Florida Writes - 10 years ago. It was incorporated into the statewide Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which also covers reading and math skills, in 1998.
The state's first writing scores were pretty dismal. School writing programs were not geared to the kind of writing-on-demand required for the test. For instance, on the state's grading scale of 1 to 6, fourth-graders averaged a 2.0 in 1993 and improved to a 3.6 in 2003.
"Writing has been a big focus for us," said Deanna Texel, supervisor for elementary reading and language arts programs in Pinellas County schools. Pinellas has consistently had some of the highest reading scores in the state for the past decade.
NAEP scores show progress over time and provide data for valid comparisons among states - two measures that often yield different results. For instance, the most recent NAEP reading scores showed Florida making tremendous improvement. Yet Florida's reading scores were still at or near the bottom third among states.
Not so with the writing scores.
Florida's fourth-graders are bunched in the same group with states like Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, which tend to excel in several academic areas.
Perhaps most telling is the improvement in eighth grade. The percentage of eighth-graders writing proficiently was 19 percent in 1998, well below the national average. In 2002, the percentage jumped to 32 percent, above the national average.
Florida's Hispanic eighth-graders had the highest percentage of proficient writers in the nation, and African-American eighth-graders had the sixth highest percentage. Despite those results, the achievement gap remains: Black students in Florida actually lost ground slightly to their white counterparts.
Both Florida's writing test and NAEP's involve actual writing, rather than multiple choice answers. In both cases, students are given subjects to write about - called "prompts" - and have a limited amount of time to write.
NAEP officials reported that students performed better when they planned what to write before actually starting. Given a blank sheet of paper, students who showed evidence of planning scored higher than those who simply launched into the essay.
That kind of planning has become a staple in Florida classrooms, as teachers over the last decade have given students specific strategies for planning and getting started on that blank sheet of paper.
"The fact of having a state assessment is not a guarantee of good writing," said Mary Ann Smith, co-director of the National Writing Project at the University of California at Berkeley. "But assessment can drive a lot of what happens in the classroom. There's no doubt that Florida made it a priority, and that made a big difference."