A history of New York state literacy test assessment: Historicizing calls to localism in writing assessment

Drawing upon archival materials, I describe the history, design, and assessment of literacy tests from early 20th century New York state. Practitioners working with these early standardized writing tests grappled with tensions created by public Nativist sentiment, the legislation of “literacy,” and calls to score the tests in standardized yet locally appropriate ways. These practitioners developed their own constructs for “reading,” “writing,” and “literacy” as they administered and scored the tests. These practitioners were enacting writing assessment theories and methods that are currently valorized in calls to local writing assessment, disrupting some assumptions about writing assessment history as a move from strict standardization to more contextualized, local approaches. Practitioner efforts also provide a way forward as we continue to negotiate between calls to localism and standardization.

► The article offers an archival study of New York state literacy tests.
► Literacy teachers resisted standardization in favor of contextualized assessment.
► Teachers valued context validity above all else.
► The study disrupts assumptions about historic enthusiasm for standardization.