National Center for Education Statistics
July 2003
Newly released by the Department of Education, this report compiles a wealth of data about how well our students performed on the NAEP writing assessment in 2002. This test was administered to 276,000 students in the fourth, eighth and twelfth grades, creating a representative sample from both public and private schools. The silver lining is that fourth and eighth graders made modest progress since 1998 (the last NAEP cycle in writing). But twelfth graders showed no significant change. More importantly, though, the report demonstrates once again how far we still have to go: in twelfth grade, just 24 percent of U.S. students write at a "proficient" level. Even more alarming are the figures for poor and minority students: only nine percent of black twelfth graders reached proficiency (a slight improvement over the 8 percent that did so in 1998). And the gaps between the best and worst performers, and between whites and blacks, have not improved. This report compares public and private schools and breaks down the data by state, grade, ethnicity, gender, parents' education, and sundry other factors. It also compares the 1998 and 2002 results whenever possible and includes sample questions and responses (the worst of which may make you wonder whether to laugh or cry). Several different versions of these results can be found at http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/writing/results2002/.
