A teacher has a goal that reads "improve written expression." Each month she grades a paragraph and writes "better" or "about the same." In June, a parent asks what the student can do now that she could not do in September. The paragraphs are in the folder, but nothing connects them.
Writing is harder to measure than reading speed, but not impossible. This guide covers what NCII lists for writing, how to write the goal, and how to keep scores comparable.
What NCII lists
NCII's Exhibit 1 gives sample target behaviors in written language for grades 1 to 6: total words written, words spelled correctly, correct word sequence, and correct letter sequence.
| Measure | What it reflects | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Total words written | How much the student produces | Counts words, not quality |
| Words spelled correctly | Spelling within connected writing | Counts correctly spelled words |
| Correct word sequence | Whether adjacent words fit together correctly | Needs a scoring guide and practice |
| Correct letter sequence | Letter order within words | Used at earlier stages; needs a scoring guide |
The first two are simple to count. The last two take more training and a published scoring guide. The notes column is a plain-language summary and not the publisher's definition, so check your tool's manual before you score.
Name the prompt and the time
NCII's goal template names a condition, a target behavior, and a level of proficiency. Its example writing condition is: "When provided a sixth-grade-level story starter and 4 minutes to write." That tells a reader the kind of prompt, the grade level, and the time.
Utah's goals guide gives similar condition phrases: "When writing three paragraphs" and "When provided a grade level topic." And it says the criterion should say how well the student must do it, so that anyone reading can tell whether the goal was met.
Choose a countable measure first
The simplest honest approach is to pick one countable measure and keep it. Suppose a third grader writes for 3 minutes in response to a story starter each week. You count total words and words spelled correctly. Over three baseline probes the totals are 21, 27, and 24, with 17, 22, and 20 spelled correctly. The medians are 24 total words and 20 spelled correctly. Divide, and about 83 percent of the words were spelled correctly. The student is producing little and spelling most of it right, so the instruction might focus on fluency of ideas before spelling.
A pattern like that is why one measure is rarely enough. Two counts from the same sample show different needs.
Where rubrics fit
A rubric scores qualities such as organization or word choice, and quality matters in writing. The problem is reliability. If two scorers would give different scores, the number is unreliable. NCII recommends valid and reliable measures, and says many teacher-developed measures, such as spelling tests or common formative assessments, have not been validated for individual progress monitoring.
The practical answer is to use a countable measure for the goal, and a rubric to describe quality alongside it. See rubric scoring for IEP goals for how to make a rubric score reliably.
Setting the number
Writing measures vary a lot with the prompt, so a benchmark or growth rate from a published tool is more trustworthy than a guess. If your tool provides benchmarks or rates of improvement, NCII's goal-setting options apply. If it does not, NCII says educators may search the literature for benchmarks, or estimate local norms, with their own limits. See writing measurable criteria for IEP goals.
An invented goal in NCII's pattern: "When given a grade 3 story starter and 3 minutes to write, Leila will write 40 words with at least 90 percent spelled correctly on three consecutive probes by spring."
Reading two counts together
| Total words | Spelled correctly | A reasonable first question |
|---|---|---|
| Low | High | Is getting ideas on paper the barrier? Look at planning and fluency of ideas. |
| High | Low | Is spelling the barrier? Look at word-level skills, not the amount of writing. |
| Low | Low | Is the task too hard? Check whether an easier prompt or a lower level fits. |
| High | High | Is the goal still the right one? Look at quality, organization, and the next skill. |
These are questions to bring to a team, not diagnoses. The counts tell you where to look. They do not tell you why.
A weekly routine
Give the writing probe on the same day each week, with the same kind of prompt and the same time. Say the directions from a script, so the wording does not drift. Collect the sample, count the two numbers the same day, and record them with the date and the prompt. File the sample itself in the student's folder. When it is time to write a progress report, you have the numbers and the writing to point to, and a parent can see the change in the student's own words.
Keeping scores comparable
- Same kind of prompt. A story starter and an opinion prompt produce different counts.
- Same time. Three minutes and five minutes are different measures.
- Same mode. Pencil, keyboard, or speech to text, stated in the goal.
- Same scorer rules. Decide before the first probe how to treat a word with a spelling that is partly right.
- Two scorers at the start. Score a few samples together and compare.
Utah on writing goals
Utah's guide tells teams to identify the essential skills in English language arts, which include writing among phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, comprehension, and oral language, then choose a focus for the individual student based on the present levels. It also says to incorporate student voice and choice into the goal. For writing, that might mean letting the student choose among prompts of the same type. The prompt type stays the same, and the topic is the student's choice.
Writing probe errors
- Grading quality and counting in one pass. Do the count first.
- Switching prompts to keep the student interested. Rotate topics, not types.
- Counting words in an unfinished last sentence one way one week and another the next. Fix the rule.
- Writing "improve writing" as a goal. Name the skill and the measure.
See also curriculum-based measurement basics and the glossary.
Scoring rules belong to the publisher
The sources here name the measures but not the scoring rules, and they do not set a standard prompt or time for every grade. Use your tool's manual, and ask your special education teacher or school psychologist if your district has a preferred writing probe.