WCS Students to Take TCAP Writing Assessment

Published January 24, 2013

Williamson County Schools students in grades 5, 8 and 11 will take the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment (TCAP) Program Writing Assessment the week of February 4-8. Fifth graders will take their assessment February 5. Individual schools will establish their own schedule for grades 8 and 11.

The purpose of the TCAP Writing Assessment is to measure each student's progress toward achieving Tennessee goals and standards. This year, several aspects of the test are being changed to meet the expectations of the new Common Core Standards.

The design of the prompts has changed. The students will encounter a reading stimulus and prompt that they are required to read before they begin to write. A reading stimulus can be a work of fiction or an informational piece. Speeches, poems, charts, graphs, letters, legal decisions, or timelines may also be considered as reading stimulus. The prompt will appear in a text box at the end of the reading stimulus. The students will have to utilize information from the reading stimulus to write their response. In some cases, students may encounter two paired passages. They may even encounter two different types of reading stimulus.

The new prompts have a new time limit of one hour. All public school eighth and eleventh graders will take the test only online.

For the February 2013 Assessment Only:

Fifth graders will encounter a reading stimulus and a narrative prompt.

Eighth graders will encounter a reading stimulus and an expository prompt.

Eleventh graders will encounter a reading stimulus and a persuasive prompt.

In future test administrations, students on any of the tested grade levels may encounter a narrative, expository or persuasive type of prompt.

Historically, the TCAP Writing Assessment has been scored holistically using one rubric across all grade levels. A new scoring instrument is being developed to better accommodate the new design of the 2012-13 prompts.

Tennessee is a predominately English language speaking state. All assessments are provided in English only. Tennessee does not offer assessments formatted in the native language of our students other than English.

For more information, visit the following website, which includes released versions of the new prompts, new rubrics and explanatory materials. http://www.tncore.org/english_language_arts/writing_test.aspx