Why assessment of writing?

I am writing this post prior to reading any articles about writing assessment, because I believe that this will help me identify what I hope to learn through my research.

So, why did I choose to learn more about assessing student writing? 

Literacy and mathematics are two of the main focuses in elementary school. Each day students learn both of these subjects in school, and they are also the only subjects we bother to assess on standardized tests. Evidently I am not the only one who finds these subjects important. However, unlike mathematics, which have right and wrong answers, literacy is more difficult to assess.

When it comes to student writing, the biggest complaint that I hear from teachers is the sheer amount of time and energy that is required to mark and adequately assess student writing. Teachers make it seem like a burden. In addition, student writing is all different, and therefore assessment of it is open to interpretation and subjectivity. I want to learn more about assessing student writing because I want to learn how to assess student writing in a non-objective way, and do not want to think of it as a horrible task I must do. Lastly, I will be a scorer on for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test next month, and think this research will provide me with insight that I can use as a scorer of these tests.