Research :: Doug Reeves Interview

An Interview with Dr. Douglas Reeves, Founder of the Leadership and Learning Center - 2007

Recently, Vantage Learning sat down with Douglas B Reeves, Ph.D., Founder of the Leadership and Learning Center, an international organization dedicated to improving student achievement and educational equity, to discuss important issues facing educators today.

Dr. Reeves is a frequent keynote speaker at major education events and is one of the nation's leading authorities on the subject of standards, assessment, and accountability. Through its long-term relationships with school systems, the Leadership and Learning Center helps educators and school leaders to improve student achievement through practical and constructive approaches to standards, assessment, and accountability..

In particular, we asked Dr. Reeves about a subject that is important to Vantage Learning - the subject of writing.

Vantage Learning: Doug, thanks for spending time with us on a subject that is important and near and dear to our hearts - writing. For years, you have advocated just how important writing is to all subject and curriculum areas. Why is writing and the assessment of writing so powerful?

Doug Reeves: The evidence is clear that writing improves all academic subject areas. Studies that we've conducted at the Center, as well as research from others, reveal that the value of critical thinking, reasoning, and writing is widely accepted yet rarely practiced. Whether the measure is against the frequency of writing, the frequency of writing assessment, or student performance on writing tests, all produce some of the highest correlation values we've seen with respect to results.

No matter how the writing variable has been measured, the results are the same: as emphasis on classroom nonfiction writing grows, student achievement improves. We have evidence not only of reading and writing score improvement but of scores in math, science, and social studies improving as well. The best way for a student to comprehend what is in the textbook, and the best way to promote non-fiction writing comprehension, is for students to write summaries, including main idea and supporting details, of what they have read.

VL: Why isn't more writing done in classrooms?

DR: Strategic leaders must not only articulate values for their staff but also eliminate obstacles that prevent those values from becoming translated into action. Strategic leaders discern values on the basis of the intersection of principles and evidence. In the context of educational standards, the principle is that rigor, analysis, thinking, reasoning, and communications - most particularly, student writing - is a proper way to educate children even in the absence of standards and testing.

For example, a leader might propose an increase in the amount of time devoted to student writing, an initiative that is supported by a great deal of evidence but, as we mentioned earlier, is either rarely practiced or remains generally unpopular with teachers. It's not that teachers are resistant to the evidence of the impact of good writing; rather, they are well aware of the multiple demands on time in their day and the incessant requirements that they cover many other academic subjects in addition to writing.

Because writing is quite time-consuming for both students and teachers, the time devoted to writing is, they argue, time taken away from other subjects. In reality, this hypothesis has the opposite effect; more time on writing not only doesn't lower scores in other subjects, it improves them!

VL: As you work with districts throughout the country, do you see a change in this perspective from district and school leaders?

DR: Absolutely. The introduction of technology tools, such as web-based programs that score writing in the classroom. What is the #1 reason that teachers have not been able to do more extensive work with students in writing? It isn't that they lack the ability, the intellect, or the desire. The #1 reason that teacher have not been able to do more extensive work with students in writing is that they haven't had the time.

School districts like Milwaukee Public Schools [a MY Access! user and site of the original 90/90/90 work http://www.leadandlearn.com/displayPage/226] and many other districts throughout the country recognize and respect the time pressures on teachers by providing automated support for the evaluation of student writing. Our experience in other districts with students at every level is that when students get immediate feedback through automated scoring, they are much more likely to engage in re-writing - in fact, they engage in re-writing before they submit work to the teacher. Therefore, the teacher is not seeing the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th draft of work, but when MY Access! is used successfully, the teacher might see only the 1st and 5th draft - or perhaps only the 5th draft. This allows teachers to differentiate instruction, allows students to gain confidence that the work they are submitting to teachers is a genuine improvement over their previous work, and allows school leaders to express respect for teacher challenges in a specific and tangible way. [Note: MY Access! allows teachers the ability to see all drafts and revisions for all student writing; the portfolio captures 100% of all writing]

VL: Thanks for taking the time to discuss this very important subject with us. If the folks reading this interview want to find out more about what they can do to facilitate both improvements in writing achievement and what leadership challenges you can help them overcome, where can they go for answers?

DR: A wealth of information on this subject is available at the Center's website, www.leadandlearn.com. Our organization would be delighted to help districts address this important topic.