Beginning in 2000, the Florida State Board of Education incorporated a writing test into the FCAT and required students in grades four, eight and 10 to write responses to assigned topics in one testing period. In 2006, the Board of Education added an additional section to the test and renamed the test FCAT Writing Plus. In 2008, the Board scaled the test back to only one section and returned the original name, FCAT Writing.
Where the original and current FCAT Writing Test consists of one section asking students to write an essay in response to an assigned prompt, the FCAT Writing Plus Test consisted of two sections: the essay section and a multiple choice section. The multiple choice section asked students to address questions dealing with four elements of writing including focus, organization, support and conventions, and a student's FCAT Writing Plus score was a scaled score based on a composite of the essay and multiple choice scores.
During the state budget reduction process in 2008, the Florida Board of Education voted to eliminate the multiple choice section of the FCAT Writing Plus because they determined that doing so could save money without substantially affecting state or federal testing accountability. The state had also planned to use the grade 10 Writing Plus as a high school graduation requirement, but difficulties in combining the essay and multiple choice scores at this level also contributed to the elimination of the multiple choice section and a delay in the use of the grade 10 FCAT Writing Plus scores as a graduation requirement for the foreseeable future. The first class who would have graduated under this requirement would have been the Class of 2010.
Florida Senate Bill 1908, passed in 2008, reinstates the multiple choice section of the FCAT Writing Test during the 2012 to 2013 school year, although no sources indicate whether or not the state will revert to the "Writing Plus" name. Governor Charlie Crist signed a law on April 20, 2010, mandating the replacement of the Science and Math FCAT tests on the high school level with end-of-course tests and stricter graduation requirements for math and science, but the law does not move to eliminate the FCAT Writing with an end-of-course test in the near future.
The Florida Department of Education maintains a website, fcat.fldoe.org, devoted to all sections of the FCAT that archives past scores, writing prompts and school/district comparisons. The FCAT Writing score archive dates from 1997, when the Florida Writing Assessment Program still maintained the state's standardized writing test.