Valid assessment of writing and access to academic discourse

One way to improve students ' access to and retention in post-secondary degree programs is to assess their readiness for such programs accurately. To place deaf and hard-of-hearing students in preparatory courses and to determine their readi-ness for degree programs more accurately, a direct measure of writing was developed for deaf and hard-of-hearing stu-dents at a large technical university. The purpose of this study was to estimate the concurrent and predictive validity of this measure. The Test of Written English (Educational Testing Service, 1992) served as the criterion in the concur-rent validity study, and student success in the university's gateway freshman composition course served as the criterion in the predictive validity study. Results provide evidence of the concurrent and predictive validity of the measure, sup-porting its use for course placement and early planning pur-poses. Like hearing students who belong to ethnic and lin-guistic minorities, many deaf students in the United States have limited access to academic discourse. At one large technical university, deaf students ' access to associate and baccalaureate degree programs is of-ten delayed because of their skills in English language and literacy. On average, reading comprehension of these students is approximately 7.5 grade equivalents A previous version of this article was presented at the American Associa