Writing Standards Overview

          Having completed my analysis of the reading standards, I have decided to move on to the next part of the English Language Arts Standards - Writing.  Both the old Arizona standards found here and the new Arizona Common Core standards found here consist of the three major sections - reading; writing; and speaking and listening.  However, the sections themselves are organized very differently in the two sets of standards.  Today, rather than go into details of the two sets of standards, I would like to address their organization and share my first impressions of each.  For those who may not have read my previous posts, I have started with 12th grade standards because they are the dividing line between high school and college or career.  Since the new standards claim to be college and career ready standards, I decided to start with the 12th grade standards and work my way backwards.

The Facts:

• The old standards have three strands: Writing Process (28%)*, Writing Elements (39%), and Writing Applications (35%).  Within each of these strands are concepts, each of which contains multiple standards.  Writing Process has five concepts: Prewriting (8%), Drafting (2%), Revising (10%), Editing (4%), and Publishing (4%).  Writing Elements concepts are: Ideas and Content (4%); Organization (5%); Voice (5%); Word Choice (4%); Sentence Fluency (4%); and Conventions (17%).  The final strand, Writing Applications is comprised of: Expressive (4%), Expository (8%), Functional (2%), Persuasive (4%), Literary Response (12%), and Research (5%).

* The numbers in parenthesis indicate the percent of the writing standard that each encompasses.  Because I rounded to whole numbers, the total may not be exactly 100%.

• The new writing standards are broken into four main areas: Text Types and Purposes (58%); Production and Distribution of Writing (16%); Research to Build and Present Knowledge (23%); and Range of Writing (4%).

My Opinion / Observations:

          The reasons I decided to do this overview were two-fold: 1) I wanted to better acquaint myself with the writing standards so I would know how to break them up for analysis, and 2) I immediately noticed a huge difference in the emphasis from the old standards to the new.  I included percentages of each strand (and, where nested, each concept) because I think they show some of the first impressions I had upon reading them. 
          My main impression was that the old standards focused primarily on the steps of writing (with special emphasis on pre-writing and revising) and following conventions (spelling, capitalization, etc.) while the new standards focused more on the final product - quality writing.  I definitely prefer the latter for standards.  In my opinion, standards should focus on whether or not students can do something (in this case write well in various genres), not the steps they should take to get there.  Should good writing include correct spelling and appropriate punctuation?  Of course.  Is prewriting important?  Yes.  But myriads of terrible papers have been written with proper pre-writing, review, and punctuation.  These things do not make a good article or research paper. 
          In my opinion, it is essential that students graduate high school capable of writing well thought-out, coherent, compelling papers.  This will indefinitely benefit those who proceed to college, those who gain careers that require any sort of writing, and those who want to be involved citizens who are capable of making their voices heard through the written word.  The new standards focus on this.  They leave teachers, administrators, and school boards to determine how they get the students to the end goal.  In contrast, the old standards focus primarily on the process and whether or not conventions are met with little emphasis on the actual quality of writing.  In other words, the old standards focus on the puzzle pieces, while the new standards examine whether or not the puzzle pieces can be put together to form a compelling picture.