How interesting.
Colleges are testing incoming students on their writing skills as well as their English and math skills. Many of them have to take remedial classes.
The new SAT, which will be given for the first time in the Spring, includes a Writing component to test student's skills. Colleges were finding that kids with outstanding essays were lacking in writing skills once they arrived on campus. They suspected these students had had someone else write their application essays, so now they'll be able to compare the writing sample from the SAT to the essay submitted by the student.
Our daughter is homeschooled (Jr. year), but that's one subject I've never been able to teach her well, though I finally found a curriculum that she likes and is using. We just registered her for an English Composition class at a local Community college, and she's looking forward to that.