The Writing Revolution Evaluation

Elementary school students writing on paper with pencils at a table as their teacher looks on

Problem

The Writing Revolution’s impact on teachers’ careers and student performance is unclear.

Monroe City Schools is a predominately African American district with one of the highest poverty rates in Louisiana. It is well researched that children from low-income families often start school already behind their peers who come from more affluent families. The Writing Revolution (TWR) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the writing skills of K-12 students by training teachers and coaches—referred to as the Revolutionary Team—to apply its strategies in the classroom. The TWR program emphasizes sentence- and paragraph-level writing, highlighting the need for students to learn how to create clear and coherent sentences before tackling more complex writing tasks. It also promotes the integration of writing skills across the subject areas.

TWR wishes to explore the leadership roles and career trajectories of members of its Revolutionary Teams, as well as the program’s impact on student literacy development and achievement in Louisiana’s Monroe City School District.

Solution

NORC will interview school staff and analyze test data.

NORC will interview TWR district leaders and teachers who were Revolutionary Team members to examine the program’s implementation and its impact on teachers’ careers. To assess TWR’s impact on student performance for grades three through eight, we will compare the literacy achievement of students in Monroe City Schools that have Revolutionary Teams to the performance of students in district schools without them.

We will also analyze performance by subgroup—gender, race/ethnicity, language status, special education, and socio-economic status—and by teacher and school characteristics. Additionally, we will explore the literacy achievement of students in K-2 grades by analyzing data from the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills assessments from fall, winter, and spring.

Result

Our study captured the many ways TWR impacts teachers and students, including significantly better student performance .

What we learned about implementation: TWR integrated well with the district’s Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) program. Training teachers across subjects and grades and getting buy-in around TWR was key in cementing TWR in schoolwide practice.
What we learned about teacher professional development: Because of TWR training and support, teachers’ knowledge increased, their confidence improved, their approach to how they teach writing became more effective, and they felt more confident in giving direct feedback to students.
What we learned about student development and performance: Since starting TWR, students’ writing was clearer and more coherent, they were more likely to raise their hands or volunteer in class, they were able to give fuller, more coherent responses, even when responding orally. Importantly, students in TWR classrooms performed significantly better than similar students in non-TWR classrooms on the ELA writing section of the state assessment (LEAP).