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National Evaluation of Writing Project Professional Development

SRI began its 5-year National Evaluation of Writing Professional Development in November 2006. This evaluation is employing a randomized control trial to examine changes in students’ writing proficiency, students’ writing practices, teachers’ instructional practices, and teachers’ professional communities in middle schools forming partnerships with local Writing Project sites.

SRI is drawing a random sample of eligible local Writing Project sites and schools and collecting baseline data on them during the 2007-08 school year. The baseline and later data will come from on-demand writing samples; artifacts of instruction, including teacher assignments, instructional logs, and student work; annual teacher surveys; interviews and focus groups; and school records from 40 schools. During this initial year of participation in the study, half of the schools will be randomly chosen to form “partnerships” (i.e., to begin receiving services from a local NWP site). The other half will remain in the study as controls. Data collection will continue for 3 additional years in both “treatment” and “comparison” schools.

Comprehensive case studies will be conducted in a subset of these schools to help reveal how partnerships respond to local conditions and needs, to track the complexities of implementation, and to triangulate findings and trace patterns of influence among various factors. Integrating the randomized trial data with in-depth case studies will increase the validity of causal inferences about the effects of the intervention.

SRI will produce annual progress reports and deliver presentations to the NWP. The first year will document an initial survey of local NWP sites and the data collection design. Reports for years 2-4 will provide interim analyses. The final report, to be written in 2011, will provide a comprehensive description of the evaluation questions, methodology, and findings.

(National Writing Project, 2006-2011)

Key Staff

Principal Investigators: H. Alix Gallagher, Patrick Shields

Staff: Frances Bergland (CEHS), Kristin Bosetti, Ashley Campbell, Lauren Cassidy, Reina Fuji, Marilyn Gillespie, Kyle Goss, Liberty Greene, Amy Hafter, Paul Hu, Daniel Humphrey, Debbie Kim, Bladimir Lopez-Prado, Nicolette Mayes, Raymond McGhee, Robert Murphy, Samantha Murray, Ronald Orpitelli, C.J. Park, William Penuel, Diane Poole, Sylvia Rodezno, Regie Stites, Victoria Tse, Haiwen Wang, Kaily Yee