Writing Evaluation: Examining Four Teachers' Holistic and Analytic Scores

Abstract

The concurrent validity of holistic scores for writing quality, as determined by Tiedt's (1983) holistic-scoring criteria, and of constructs of teachers' analytic scores, as determined by Diederich's (1974) analytic evaluation procedure, was examined. Following training in these 2 writing-evaluation procedures, 4 classroom teachers' holistic scores of writing samples produced by 4 low-ability male eighth graders were highly correlated with their analytic scores for the same samples. However, a regression of the analytic-scoring features on the holistic scores determined that "quality and development of ideas" was the only analytic feature that accounted for a significant amount of the variance in holistic scores for all teachers. The amount of variance attributed to writing features other than ideas, organization, style, wording/phrasing, grammar/sentence structure, punctuation, and spelling ranged from 28% to 61% for the 4 teachers.