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If your children are attending college, the chances are that when they graduate they will be unable to write ordinary, expository English with any real degree of structure and lucidity. If they are in high school and planning to attend college, the chances are less than even that they will be able to write English at the minimal college level when they get there. If they are not planning to attend college, their skills in writing English may not even qualify them for secretarial or clerical work. (Sheils, 1975, p. 58)
The quote above illustrates the alarming message that our educational system is failing youth. Why Johnny Can't Write headlined Newsweek 36 years ago. More recently, the National Commission on Writing (2005) brought the writing crisis to the national educational forefront. Many recent publications have described writing as the neglected "r" (Alliance for Excellent Education, 2007; Biancarosa & Snow, 2004; Gilbert & Graham, 2010; National Writing Project & Nagin, 2003). There is very little data on what writing instruction looks like in schools, especially in grades 4-6 (Gilbert & Graham, 2010). Most studies of the past examine teachers who teach writing in an exceptional way (Pressley, Gaskins, Solic, & Collins, 2006; Rankin-Erickson & Pressley, 2000; Wray, Medwell, Fox, & Poulson, 2000), and this research primarily studies teachers in the early elementary grades (Graham, Harris, MacArthur, & Fink-Chorzempa, 2003). For these reasons, there is a need to better understand writing practices at the upper elementary through middle school levels across the US. The purpose of this article is to identify, and then describe, large urban school district literacy leaders' views on the state of writing instruction within their districts. Instead of focusing on how writing is taught in a single classroom or a single school district, we wanted a broader understanding of how multiple districts throughout the US view middle school writing instruction for the 21st century.
Effective Writing Instruction for Young Adolescents
Research literature describes many of the qualities of good writing instruction as involving the scaffolding of the teaching of writing (Lacina & Silva, 2010; Fisher & Frey, 2003; Fisher & Frey, 2007), using literature as a model for writing (Lacina & Espinosa, 2010), using a process-based approach (Calkins, 1994; Graves, 1983), teaching writing...