To be college and career ready writers, students must take task, purpose and audience into careful consideration, choosing words, information, structures and formats deliberately.
They must have the flexibility, concentration, and fluency to produce high-quality first draft text under a tight deadline and the capacity to revisit and make improvements to a piece of writing over multiple drafts when circumstances encourage or require it. (“College and Career Anchor Standards for Writing” 63)
Reading the Common Core State Standards, teachers of writing come away with a mixed message. Writing is described as rich in thought and content, but sometimes it is quick and dirty and sometimes it is careful and reconsidered. Both are true, but it leaves open the question of how to teach writing.
The above passages, from the CCSS sidebar titled “Range and content of student writing,” illustrate how our national standards for writing are torn between the deliberate and the driven. In the first sentence, the words “careful consideration” and “deliberately” stand out. This emphasizes that writing is a process. In the second sentence, the key words seem to be “high-quality first draft text under a tight deadline,” which suggests the need for a “quick and dirty” approach. However this is followed by a disclaimer which urges the “capacity to revisit and make improvements to a piece of writing.” Then, lest we become too leisurely in the process of writing, the final phrase cautions “when circumstances encourage or require it.”
The beauty of these contradictions about “range and content of student writing” is that they are probably all true. Writing is both deliberate and driven, according to the purpose and occasion. It would be petty to insist that the standards for writing be unwavering and consistent, because writing is not like that.
What does annoy me is that we assess only the “driven” side of writing, the world of desperation and deadlines. The language about “high-quality first draft text” is an obvious rationale for the impromptu essay, written in thirty minutes or less and unapologetically assessed as “first-draft writing.” This how the ACT, the College Board, and most state assessments evaluate writing. The question is “Of what social or professional value is first draft writing?” Or “Why be driven?”
Some professional roles dictate a “high-quality first draft text under a tight deadline.” Newspaper reporters come to mind. Office scribes — secretaries, document drafters, those who write for their bosses — may be required to write under short deadlines. For some reason, this remarkable skill is often uncompensated and yet under-girds the other forms of writing that allow newspapers to publish and businesses to function. It is a valuable skill, but not always valued.
Every other kind of writing falls under the “capacity to revisit and make improvements,” and it is the kind of writing most respected in journalism and commerce. Feature articles, Op-ed articles, Topical columns, Investigative articles. Project or marketing proposals, contracts, human resources documents, end-user documents, public relations documents. No one writes these in one draft or under unreasonable time constraints. Oh yes, deadlines will sometimes be sudden and arbitrary, but no one considers high pressure the formula for good writing. And writing in journalism, law and business is incurably collaborative. Numerous pairs of eyes must examine work in progress and editors may insist on putting their mark on it, even a controversial comma.
In the “real world” the writing process is alive and well and respected. Only in school is it considered a sideline, producing the kind of writing pored over by teachers, but rarely high stakes, rarely a standard for “success.” The writing that counts is “driven” writing. It is the kind of writing most students claim they are good at. Why? Because that is the kind of writing we assess for success. To many students the quickwrite is the money genre, the one that counts. Students who claim they can write well, but need time, seem to be asking for special consideration. They are somehow deficient because their writing process is an actual process.
To be college and career ready writers, students must take task, purpose and audience into careful consideration, choosing words, information, structures and formats deliberately.
Deliberation. To me that describes what writers really do. It comes from a Middle English word meaning to “balance or weigh.” Writers balance “task, purpose and audience . . . words, information, structures and formats.” That’s a lot of balancing, and it will not be easily executed in thirty minutes. It will be executed . . . deliberately. Writing teachers’ message to their students is to “trust the process.” The message of our standardized assessments is “Get ‘er done.”
. . . choosing words, information, structures and formats deliberately.
It is comforting to see deliberation validated in the Common Core State Standards. It gives dignity to writing and the teaching of writing. Now if it would only be reinforced by the Common Core State Assessments. The Deliberate . . . not the Driven.