Despite Washington's present focus on the importance of education, a lack of reading and writing skills continue to hinder individual and corporate success in the United States today. About half of all private 4-year institutions offered remedial writing courses. Writing is a focal point of every state and school district's education standards. Yet the National Writing Project is the only national program that seeks to improve the teaching of writing through professional development for teachers, kindergarten through college. The project serves over 100,000 teachers annually through its network of 167 sites in 49 states, Washington, DC, and Puerto Rico.
Sites operate from university campuses and collaborate with surrounding schools and districts.
Successful writing teachers attend invitational summer institutes at their local writing project sites to share best practices, conduct research and develop their own writing skills. These same teachers then share what they have learned with other teachers, providing professional development workshops in their own schools and communities. If student achievement and success are to be the nation's focus, the National Writing Project should be at the top of every legislator's priority list. The results are outstanding. Third and fourth grade students of writing project teachers in Mississippi, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and California, for example, showed significant improvement in writing achievement in a 1999-2000 Academy for Educational Development study.