2012-13 TCAP Writing Assessment

To support student and teacher readiness for PARCC and to reflect the shifts of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, the Tennessee Department of Education has made significant format changes to the TCAP Writing Assessment for the 2012-13 school year.

The writing assessment, which will continue to be given to 5th, 8th, and 11th grade students, will be administered in a window from February 4, 2013 to February 8, 2013.

There will be two key changes to the writing assessment for the 2012-13 school year:

1. Format changes: To reflect the design of the PARCC assessment and the instructional shifts of the ELA standards, the writing assessment will be text-based. Students will be required to read a passage and cite evidence from the text in the response. To match these format changes, new rubrics have been developed. This year, the writing assessment will continue to be narrative at grade 5, informative/explanatory at grade 8, and argument at grade 11.
2. Online administration: To build readiness for online PARCC assessments, the writing assessment at grades 8 and 11 will be administered online for the 2012-13 school year. Districts will have the option of administering the fifth-grade writing assessment online or in paper form. More information about online administration will be sent this fall to testing coordinators.

For the next two years, the Writing Assessment will have no effect upon district or school level accountability and will not be factored into teacher value-added scores, giving teachers and students a chance to learn and prepare for new standards and expectations in a low-stakes manner.

Please review the materials posted below, which include supporting resources which explain the new format in further detail and answer common questions, the new rubrics, and samples of the new prompts. In November, we will be adding scoring materials including anchor papers. All of these materials are owned by the Tennessee Department of Education and made available for Tennessee educators; we invite teachers to use them however they see fit. Materials on this page should not be used for commercial or resale purposes.

Supporting Resources

An explanation of the changes in format

Frequently asked questions

Special education accommodations

Scoring Rubrics

An explanation of how to use the new rubrics

Informative/explanatory rubric

Narrative rubric

Opinion/argument rubric

Sample Prompts

As of February 20, four new prompts have been added to each grade level.

5th grade prompts

8th grade prompts

11th grade prompts

Scoring Materials

Scoring materials for sample prompts