Literacy and language arts

The National Writing Project’s (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) is designed to improve students’ argument writing through intensive teacher professional development, instructional resources, and formative assessment. In 2016, based on evidence of C3WP’s prior success in improving student achievement, NWP received a federal Investing in Innovation (i3) Scaleup grant to test C3WP in new contexts.

The National Writing Project’s (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) is designed to improve students’ argument writing through intensive teacher professional development, instructional resources, and formative assessment. In 2016, based on evidence of C3WP’s prior success in improving student achievement, NWP received a federal Investing in Innovation (i3) Scaleup grant to test C3WP in new contexts. As part of this grant, SRI International (SRI) conducted a 1-year random assignment evaluation of C3WP in grades 7–9 that found consistent program implementation and positive, statistically significant impacts on student writing achievement. This is the third evaluation of C3WP in secondary grades, all of which have found positive and statistically significant effects on student achievement. The size, scale, rigor, and independence of these three studies provide a strong evidence base to support C3WP’s effectiveness in improving students’ secondary writing achievement at scale and in diverse contexts. This research brief provides a high-level overview of C3WP and its evidence base.

The world of work is changing rapidly and employers increasingly critique the preparation of incoming graduates, with only 11 percent agreeing students have the competencies needed to succeed in the workplace. Add to this picture low college completion rates and high remediation rates and the story is clear: too many students are graduating high school unprepared for college or career. Educators across the nation are grappling with how to better prepare students to succeed in the workforce, and their efforts are supported by recent federal legislation. However, the rapidly changing workforce makes it challenging to come to consensus around what skills students should have when they leave high school. What does it mean to be “career ready,” and how can such a complex and evolving concept best be assessed and supported? In an effort to address these questions, Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Appalachia convened representatives from all ten RELs together with nationally renowned experts for a workshop to discuss how educators and researchers in each region are addressing the development and measurement of career readiness, and to share ideas and resources for how to improve and sync these efforts nationally.

The National Writing Project’s (NWP) College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) provides professional development for teachers in Grades 7–10 with the goal of improving students’ source-based argument writing. C3WP aims to build teachers’ understanding of and skill in teaching argument writing. C3WP was subject to a prior rigorous evaluation, which found that 2 years of C3WP had a positive impact on writing outcomes for students in Grades 7-10 in high-need, rural districts (Gallagher et al., 2017). C3WP was formerly called the College-Ready Writers Program (CRWP). In 2015, with the support of a Supporting Effective Educator Development (SEED) grant, the National Writing Project sought to extend the reach of the program to nonrural contexts and to examine the efficacy of a short-cycle version of the program. The SEED grant also supported researchers at SRI Education to conduct an independent evaluation (a within-teacher randomized controlled trial) designed to examine both program implementation and the impact of the program on teachers’ instructional practices and student learning. This report presents the results of the short-cycle impact analysis that focused on 7th and 8th grade English Language Arts (ELA) teachers in high-needs districts. The technical report begins with a discussion of the C3WP program components and intended outcomes. Then, it describes the research design including a discussion of recruitment and randomization; site, teacher, class, and student samples; and data and methods. Finally, the report provides findings related to program implementation, teacher practice outcomes, and student learning outcomes. Ultimately, we find that the short-cycle implementation of C3WP had positive and statistically significant impacts on a measure of student writing achievement.

In an independent evaluation, SRI International found that a two-year implementation of the National Writing Project’s College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) had a positive, statistically significant effect on a validated measure of students’ source-based argument writing (Gallagher, Arshan, & Woodworth, 2017).In response to policymakers’ and district leaders’ questions about the intensity of resources used, the National Writing Project partnered with SRI to test the efficacy of a short-cycle implementation of C3WP. In this study, SRI randomized two classrooms of 31 teachers into either C3WP or business as usual. These were seventh- or eighth-grade classrooms in 12 urban and rural high-needs schools across five states. (One teacher withdrew from the study.) The teachers had six months to use C3WP curricular materials and formative assessment tools in their C3WP class before measuring student writing outcomes in both classes. Teaching students to write arguments developed through reasoning and supported by the use of evidence from source material is complex. This study showed a positive, statistically significant impact on two attributes of student source-based argument writing, demonstrating promise for the short-cycle version of C3WP professional development in impacting students’ ability to engage in such writing. The findings were less robust than those from the two-year version of the program, however. This suggests that although schools may see results from C3WP in a single school year, a longer term investment may produce a greater impact. This study also expanded C3WP into urban contexts, demonstrating potential effectiveness for a broader range of students.