Glencoe Online Essay Grader Helps Louisiana Student Achieve Perfect Writing Score on State Test

Many teachers may think a program that can substantially improve students' writing scores exists only in their dreams, but one teacher in Louisiana's Franklin Parish knows it is a reality.

Once students in Franklin Parish's Crowville Middle School began using Glencoe's Online Essay Grader, they took an interest in proofreading and editing their work. Their writing skills drastically improved. After six weeks using the program, this year's Grade 8 students improved their composite scaled writing score by 18 percentage points on the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program (LEAP) compared to last year's scores. One student earned a perfect score.

Glencoe's Online Essay Grader is a component of Glencoe Literature, a literature series for Grades 6-12 that offers a comprehensive collection of exceptional literature and engaging nonfiction with integrated skill development and targeted differentiated instruction.

Glencoe's Online Essay Grader offers students valuable online tutorials and reporting tools to track and improve their writing performance. Teachers assign grade-level specific prompts from the Glencoe Literature series, and online student writing tools guide students through the writing process. Individualized, automatic scoring provides narrative feedback, a holistic score, and six trait scores.

Pam Ashley, the Grade 8 English language arts teacher at Crowville Middle School, incorporated Glencoe's Online Essay Grader as daily writing practice when she became worried about her students' ability to pass the writing portion of the LEAP. Ashley also incorporated Glencoe Literature's lessons in voice and word choice lessons.

"Because Glencoe's Online Essay Grader scoring directly correlates to the scoring on the Louisiana Practice Assessment/Strengthen Skills (PASS), I was able to focus my students on the two areas in which they struggled - word choice and voice," said Ashley.

"Glencoe's Online Essay Grader is an efficient method to develop student writers," said Dori Veto, director of marketing for literature and language arts for Glencoe/McGraw-Hill. "Students submit an essay online and receive automatic feedback. With teacher direction, they are able to revise, edit, and submit their work as many times as they'd like to get a better score. It saves teachers grading time in the early stages and moves students further along in the writing process so the teacher can provide valuable feedback when it's most productive."

"The students love the instant feedback, and take pride in proofreading their papers, which is sometimes unheard of at this grade level," Ashley said. "I used Glencoe's Online Essay Grader to set the bar higher for them, and it worked."

For more information about Glencoe's Online Essay Grader or to see a tutorial, please visit http://www.glencoe.com/sec/glencoewriting/.

About Glencoe/McGraw-Hill

Glencoe/McGraw-Hill is part of McGraw-Hill School Solutions Group (MHSSG). The group combines Macmillan/McGraw-Hill, which focuses on Grades PreK-6, and Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, which serves Grades 6-12. MHSSG is the only major educational publishing business to provide a comprehensive approach to the development of print and digital instructional materials from pre-kindergarten through high school. Additional information is available at http://www.glencoe.com/.

About McGraw-Hill Education

McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP), is a leading global provider of instructional, assessment and reference solutions that empower professionals and students of all ages. McGraw-Hill Education has offices in 33 countries and publishes in more than 60 languages. Additional information is available at http://www.mheducation.com/.

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SOURCE: McGraw-Hill Education

CONTACT: Tom Stanton of McGraw-Hill Education, +1-212-904-3214,
tom_stanton@mcgraw-hill.com; or Yvonne Pentz of Paul Werth Associates,
+1-614-224-8114, ypentz@paulwerth.com

Web Site: http://www.glencoe.com/
http://www.glencoe.com/sec/glencoewriting