California Writing Project Partnerships With Schools: A Study Of Benefits To Teachers And Students

Authors

Laura Stokes. With assistance from Kathleen Dickey, Barbara Heenan, Judy Hirabayashi, Allison Murray, Dr. Mark St. John, Inverness Research Inc.

Purpose

In 1998, the California Subject Matter Projects (CSMP) launched an initiative, in response to AB 1734, designed to make partnerships with schools a strategic context for providing professional development to teachers. Such partnerships would consist of long-term, formal relationships between schools and CSMP sites, and would involve tailored professional development activities for teachers as well as CSMP participation in school-level strategic planning. The partnership initiative was based on this notion: the school organization is an important unit of change and an important context for teacher development; thus, as CSMP sites worked directly with teachers, they would do so as part of a long-term and more in-depth relationship between CSMP sites and schools.

For the California Writing Project (CWP), in operation since the mid-1970’s, the partnership initiative added a new dimension to an array of teacher development programs conducted at a statewide scale. In 2001-02, the 18 sites of the CWP offered 1,714 different programs that served 19,530 individual educators. About 65% of all these programs were inservice programs, mostly conducted in schools during the academic year. By 2001-02– four years after the launch of the partnership initiative – 30% of all CWP inservice programs were conducted within the context of a partnership. The CWP reported a total of 146 partnerships with schools, districts and other agencies that year.

In the fall of 2002, the California Writing Project asked our group at Inverness Research Associates (IRA) to conduct a survey of teachers participating in CWP partnerships. This Executive Summary highlights the results of that survey; more detailed findings and survey results are included in the full report.

Intended Audience

California Writing Project, National Writing Project, Teachers, School and District Administrators, Reform Leaders, and general public.

Disclaimer

Any and all errors are claimed by the authors of this document, Inverness Research Associates

Date published

June 2003

Distribution Policy

Inverness Research Inc. grants permission to print and distribute copies.

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Full report (pp. 39)

Appendix A (pp. 6) | Appendix B.1 (pp. 8) | Appendix B.2 (pp. 8) |
Appendix C (pp. 1)