What if we just did a Free Write Portfolio as our summative assessment each semester? We could use the OWATS model. Then we wouldn’t have to formally test writing each semester with some stupid test, and if he had the kahunas that DPS has, we would just drop testing of speech output, and then we could design some nice reading and listening* instruments, and our semester testing would make more sense.
*This assessment instrument can’t be boring. We can’t do stories all year and then test the kids with some generic boring listening test. Can we? Wouldn’t that skew the results?