Our Better Judgment: Teacher Leadership for Writing Assessment

“In this age of ‘accountability,’ teachers have been treated as targets of assessment rather than agents of it; assessment is something that is done to teachers, not something they do.” 

And this state of affairs, argue Chris W. Gallagher and Eric D. Turley, must not continue if we want our students to develop the skills that will enable them to succeed in this brave new world of technological and global literacy. Teachers do have a role in writing assessment, the authors suggest, and we have much to gain if we move assessment to the center of our professional practice, especially if we approach writing assessment through an inquiry framework that allows us to collaborate with students, other teachers, and community members to build our own assessment literacy, expertise, and leadership. 

Based on the IRA–NCTE Standards for the Assessment of Reading and Writing, Revised Edition, this book brings us inside teachers’ local contexts—classrooms, schools, and communities—to illustrate how teachers are taking the reins of writing assessment, guiding and improving the writing and literacy practices of their students while simultaneously reflecting on and revising their own instructional practices. 

As part of NCTE’s Principles in Practice imprint, Our Better Judgment shows us what is possible when teachers practice leadership in writing assessment and challenges us to speak out about what our students really need.

Chris W. Gallagher is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where he teaches courses in writing, teaching, literacy, and rhetoric. In addition to articles published in Phi Delta Kappan, Composition Studies, JAC, Writing on the Edge, and other journals, he authored Radical Departures: Composition and Progressive Pedagogy (2002, NCTE).