Persuasive writing, technical writing, creative writing, journalismall have their place in education and are useful in different capacities. Yet, students across all fields of learning must develop basic writing skills in order to excel and communicate effectively.
So why then, did President Obama sign a bill to cut all federal funding to the National Writing Project earlier this month? This all-encompassing program is devoted to teacher development and strengthening writing skills across subjects for students at all grade levels.
The NWP’s 2009 annual survey reports that throughout the nation, program sites (see pages 12-15) are set up on the campuses of over 200 colleges and universities, with over 70,000 teachers serving the program’s objectives. Each year, 1. 4 million students and 130,000 teachers gain academic and professional development through the NWP.
It’s by no means a small program, and results have continuously showed that enrolled students displayed an improvement in basic writing skills by the end. In NWP’s 2010 study , about 92 percent of the NWP students surveyed across seven states showed higher increases in writing achievement than peers who had not participated in the program.
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Weeks ago, as is increasingly the case, I was proofreading an upcoming article by one of ASBJ‘s columnists and found myself sub vocalizing words like “yes!,” “so true!,” and “this is really helpful!” Of course, that’s the point having expert columnists — to help school board members and administrators do their jobs better. I’m just here to add an exclamation point.
