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Responding to the National Crisis in Writing: An Efficacy Study of an Elementary Grades Writing Program

Year: 2009
Name of Institution:
Education Development Center, Inc.
Goal: Efficacy and Replication
Principal Investigator:
Kotula, Andrea
Award Amount: $2,235,330
Award Period: 4 years
Award Number: R305A090479

Description:

Co-Principal Investigator: Terrence Tivnan

Purpose: The ability to write effectively is critical for success in school, college and the workplace. Yet, results of the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress to assess writing (NAEP 2007) indicate that only about one-quarter of 4th and 12th grade students are proficient writers. More research is needed to determine the type of instruction that is needed to support strong writing skills. This efficacy project will address the gap in our understanding of effective writing instruction through a randomized controlled trial of The Writers' Express (WEX), a writing program for students in third through twelfth grade, as implemented in fourth and fifth grade classrooms.

Project Activities: The WEX program is a year-long writing curriculum supported through professional development for teachers and school administrators. In this study, 70 schools will be randomly assigned to implement the WEX program or to continue with the usual writing instruction in fourth grade. In the first year of implementation, the effects of the WEX program on student writing outcomes will be evaluated using results of the statewide writing assessment administered at the end of fourth grade in the study schools. In the second year of implementation, a second cohort of fourth graders will be assessed to determine if students of teachers who now have 2 years experience with the WEX program show greater improvement than the students from the prior study year. In addition, the first cohort of students will be followed into fifth grade to determine if there are sustained effects of the intervention on writing performance. Exploratory analyses will be used to identify factors that may enhance high fidelity implementation of the program and that lead to better student writing.

Products: The expected products of this study include published reports on the efficacy of the WEX program for improving student writing in fourth and fifth grade. The results of this research will provide information about effective instructional practices and the types of professional development needed for teachers to implement and school administrators to support writing programs in elementary schools.

Structured Abstract

Setting: Seventy elementary schools located in five Title 1 school districts in Massachusetts.

Population: Study participants are approximately 5,000 fourth grade students followed into fifth grade, their teachers and the administrators in the schools.

Intervention: The WEX program involves three hours of writing instruction per week during the school year. As the program begins, activities are presented to students to foster confidence, enthusiasm, and skill in writing. In the following weeks, students receive explicit instruction on important writing skills such as topic development, sensory detail and evidence, as well as technical skills such as sentence mechanics, punctuation and subject-verb agreement. Each skill is developed individually over a three week period through daily instruction and practice that involves writing and revising in response to teacher feedback. Every fourth week students learn about different genres of writing such as personal narrative, fiction, and informational writing. The WEX program includes professional development for teachers in the form of workshops and coaching, as well as leadership training and coaching for school administrators to help them monitor and support implementation of the program.

Research Design and Methods: In this efficacy study, schools are randomly assigned to treatment or control condition. All fourth grade teachers and school administrators in the treatment schools will receive the WEX training and their students (Cohort 1) will receive the WEX curriculum for one school year. The fourth grade teachers in the treatment schools will deliver the WEX curriculum to a subsequent cohort of fourth grade students (Cohort 2) to determine possible effects of extended teacher experience with the WEX curriculum on student writing. Cohort 1 students will also be assessed during their fifth grade year to determine if there are sustained effects of the WEX curriculum on student writing. In the second year, fifth grade classrooms in half of the treatment schools and half of the control schools will also receive the WEX intervention. This will provide additional information about the effects of extended student exposure to the WEX intervention on student writing outcomes.

Control Condition: Fourth grade teachers at the control schools will continue with their typical writing instruction. The research team will document writing instruction in the control schools in order to understand similarities and differences between the WEX program and typical practices used to teach writing in these school districts.

Key Measures: The statewide end-of-year writing assessment, the English Language Arts Writing Prompt-Composition from the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) will be used as the primary outcome measure to test the impact of the WEX intervention on student writing in fourth grade. Previously released Composition components of the MCAS will be administered as a pre-test for all treatment and control students, and as a post-test for all fifth grade students who receive the intervention. All students will respond to writing prompts with 20-minute writing samples at three times during the intervention period to assess growth in student writing. These writing samples will be scored using rubrics included in the WEX program materials. Students will also complete a brief survey on attitudes and perceptions about writing developed specifically for use in the current study. Teachers and administrators will complete surveys developed by the research team to measure knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes about writing. The WEX program includes teacher and administrator logs that will be used to measure implementation fidelity. Observation, interview, and focus group protocols will be developed by the research team to provide additional information on implementation fidelity and identification of typical writing instruction in the study schools. Student journals with embedded teacher comments will also be collected to assess level of implementation.

Data Analytic Strategy: The effect of the WEX intervention on student MCAS writing scores will be determined using multilevel regression analyses. Individual growth in student writing will be modeled using student performance on the embedded writing assessments collected three times during the school year. Fidelity of implementation will be examined through qualitative analyses of student, teacher, and administrator surveys, teacher and administrator logs, student writing samples and student journals. In the final year of the study, the research team will conduct site visits of schools identified through student outcome data and implementation data in the second intervention year to contrast schools with positive, negative, or unanticipated results. Field notes and protocols from the site visits will be transcribed and coded to explore factors that are associated with successful implementation of the WEX program versus those that may interfere with program implementation.