In September West Windsor-Plainsboro students in grades five to nine will participate in a standardized writing assessment published by the Educational Records Bureau known as the ERB WrAP.
Students will be asked to construct well-organized essays to demonstrate their writing abilities. The ERB WrAP will be administered in two 50-minute sessions. Student essays will be judged in six areas: overall development, organization, support, sentence structure, word choice, and mechanics.
ERB will score the tests, and results are expected to come back in November.
The school district will be able to use the ERB WrAP as an indicator that can provide teachers and administrators with insight on a student’s writing ability. However, results of the ERB WrAP will not be used for any determinations in the district such as class placement or report card grades. A statement on the school district’s website, WW-P.org, explains the usefulness of the exam’s results:
“With information from the ERB WrAP, teachers can better serve student needs as well as plan writing instruction throughout the 2012-’13 school year. Also, this assessment offers important comparative data with other high-achieving school districts.”
Parents who have questions about the testing can contact Martin Smith, assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, at 609-716-5000, ext. 5025, or Deirdre Bova, supervisor of K-12 language arts at 609-716-5000, ext. 7307 or by E-mail: deirdre.bova@ww-p.org.
