No more writing for your teacher

SEATTLE – The days of writing an essay about your dog because you knew your teacher loves animals are over for high school students in the Bellevue and Northshore school districts. Teachers aren’t even reading many high school essays in those suburban districts; instead, the work is being evaluated by professional readers.

The districts say their professional reader programs give teachers an opportunity to give students more writing practice without the added pressure of finding time to grade their papers. But some people are concerned that the practice interferes with a teacher’s ability to keep track of and guide student progress.

Bellevue officials said they adopted the program to give students more writing practice without adding to teacher workloads.

Many English teachers in the region teach five classes a day with 30 students each. If they assign a two-page essay in every class, that adds up to 300 pages to read, edit, comment on and grade.

Bellevue officials estimate their students can write seven, three- to five-page essays a semester, compared with two essays in a traditional literature class.

“External readers encourage teachers to assign more writing. That’s the heart of it,” said David Conley, director of the Center for Educational Policy Research at the University of Oregon. “The amount of writing in high school is dramatically less than what’s expected in college.”

Conley consulted with the Bellevue School District as it reworked its curriculum two years ago to increase its rigor and prepare more students for college. He recommended Bellevue students do more discursive and argumentative writing, the type they are most likely to do in college, and less literary analysis, the type most frequently assigned in high school English classes.

Bellevue this year launched a required senior English class that relies almost entirely on paid readers to analyze and grade all but a fraction of papers. Teachers don’t see most of their students’ written work, and they don’t give most of the grades.

The use of paid readers isn’t new. In the 1980s, many districts hired professional readers to assist their English teachers, said Carol Jago, co-director of the California Reading and Literature Project.

The Theme Reader program in Northshore, in which teachers weigh readers’ comments and assign grades, has been in place for at least 15 years, officials said.

But Jago said the practice raises questions. “What’s lost is how teachers get to know their students through their writing. And students no longer know the audience they’re writing for,” she said. But others point out that anonymous readers evaluate students on a range of tests including the WASL and the SAT.

In the Seattle school district, Garfield High School started using paid readers after parents criticized the school’s English department for not giving students more writing practice and more detailed feedback to improve skills.

During fall semester, readers commented on 725 papers and critiqued 435 practice WASL essays written by ninth-graders, said Gretchen Wilkinson, chair of the Garfield English department. Teachers will use the notes to identify students who need more help.

“We wouldn’t have been able to give that kind of attention to the essays unless all our ninth-grade teachers were willing to give up three to four weekends and not get anything done in our regular classes,” Wilkinson said.

Lance Balla, a curriculum and technology coach for Bellevue schools, said the district built into the program several checks to keep teachers informed about their students’ work. The teachers develop a scoring guide for each assignment and read three out of every 30 essays. Readers and teachers consult after each set of papers is graded, and teachers are expected to use the readers’ comments to look for common problems and, if necessary, adjust their teaching.

“It’s not just a way to give a kid a score, it’s a way to improve instruction across the district,” Balla said.

That’s debatable, said Stephen Miller, president of the Bellevue Education Association.

“All English teachers would agree that students become better writers by writing more. But is writing many essays more important than personal feedback from your teacher? We don’t know the answer,” he said.