Assessing the Gap

Every year I've taught in the SCCPSS school system, we hear the same thing, or at least a new version:

Our writing scores are low. Go meet with your team and come up with a way to improve them. Create a SMART goal that will demonstrate at least ____% growth for next year.

The "scores" part is correct. Our students DO score low on the writing - at least our averages are low. On a school-to-school basis, there are some schools that typically score lower than others, and there's a rabbit hole for that discussion. What concerns me, as an ELA teacher, is the discrepancy between our reading scores and our writing scores. As you can see in the chart below, our scores are lower than our neighbors' and our writing scores are MUCH lower.

Statewide Scores for ELA

Here are the SCCPSS scores over the last 5 years. Look especially at the proficiency in writing. The district tries to imply that "Developing Learner and Above" means "on grade level," but developing learners ARE NOT ON GRADE LEVEL. They usually read and write at sub-standard levels. In the chart below, I've given a better comparison for 2018 and 2019.

The Solution

Teaching students to write (and we will focus on narrative writing in this PLU) takes time and creativity; to be honest, we too often try to teach writing in formulaic, "packaged" ways. We stifle our students' creativity by creating stilted, boring writing activities, and we stunt their growth as writers by 1) writing too rarely, and 2) not providing real, timely feedback.