Digital Partnerships for Professional Development: Rethinking University–Public School Collaborations

History And Context Of Responding To Student Writing Online (Rswo)

In the fall of 2009, the state of North Carolina was beginning the process of implementing a statewide Graduation Project¹ for high school seniors, one that would involve a rich portfolio of different kinds of writing, including a major researched paper. But as often happens with top-down, large-scale approaches, the NC Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) and the NC Department of Education (NCDOE) had not allocated sufficient funding or time to provide detailed professional development for NC teachers who would be responsible for guiding students through the new Graduation Project process. As state-level discussions progressed, one local school district, NRMPS, was considering a move that would have their students’ researched essays, a core component of the new NC Graduation Project (NCGP), responded to/evaluated by external constituencies. Some district administrators in the NRMPS system were concerned that students in their schools were not getting sufficiently rigorous responses to their writing; they worried that their own teachers would be tempted to “go easy” on their own students’ work; central office wanted some outside (read “objective”) evaluators to make sure that the students would receive valuable feedback that would inspire revision prior to the end-of-year Graduation Project assessments. NRMPS knew the qualities they sought in evaluators (e.g., teaching experience, knowledge of research writing, experience with assessing writing), but they were not necessarily sure who those evaluators should be or how NRMPS could ensure the evaluators would provide the services they sought.