Giving Compass' Take:

• Brawley Union High  School saw dramatic increases in academic achievement after developing a curriculum that included writing in every class. 

• How can writing change the way students think about their success? What is the best approach to empowering students through writing? 

• Read about how to ensure that students will care about writing. 

Brawley Union High School requires all students to write regularly in every class, including P.E.

The writing program helped spur a culture shift throughout the Brawley Union High School District, which includes a continuation high school for students who are behind in credits and a community day school for students who have behavior or attendance problems. The culture shift included comprehensive teacher training and staff teambuilding, new classes, and stressing the importance of standardized Smarter Balanced tests in English language arts and math to students.

It’s a significant achievement for the Brawley high school, where 74 percent of students are low-income; 22 percent are learning English; and 10 percent are migrants, who change schools during the year to follow their parents’ work in agriculture or other industries.

Over the past three years, the school, which serves about 1,670 students, has seen its scores soar on these tests aligned to the Common Core standards, which high school juniors take each spring.

English language arts scores rose 30.6 percentage points to 64.6 percent of students meeting or exceeding standards on Smarter Balanced tests from 2014-15 to 2016-17, while math scores increased by nearly 17 percentage points to 29.9 percent achieving those benchmarks.

Read the full article on writing in every class by Theresa Harrington at Ed Source