Wednesday, August 26, 2020

New study shows students do not spend enough time writing


Effective writing is a critical skill for success in many aspects of life. In a survey done in 2018 by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 82 percent of employers said it is essential that their employees have strong written communication skills. Outside of college and career, writing is an essential form of communication, from emails to tweets to texts, people are all writing a lot every day. 

Though writing is an indispensable skill, students across the nation struggle to produce writing that meets college and career expectations. In 2019, 41 percent of students who took the American College Testing (ACT) exam did not score well enough to meet readiness benchmarks for a college-level English composition class. Or consider that employers find less than half of college graduates to be proficient writers. 

Why haven’t writing outcomes improved? While the exact answer to this question is beyond the scope of this brief, the research here provides some important insights. Specifically, this study examined the survey data collected from the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) writing assessment, the most recent available. 
Outside of college and career, writing is an essential form of communication, from emails to tweets to texts, people are all writing a lot every day. 
There were a few important findings from this analysis:

The study of the NAEP data revealed only about 25 percent of middle school students and 31 percent of high school students write about 30 minutes a day, meeting the standard set out by experts. Even worse, many students are writing well below this standard, with 33 percent of middle schoolers and 34 percent high schoolers writing up to 15 minutes writing a day. 

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