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Now, that doesn’t mean testing is going to go away; there will be testing.  But the point is, is that we need to refine how we’re assessing progress so that we can have accountability without rigidity — accountability that still encourages creativity inside the classroom, and empowers teachers and students and administrators.
- President Barack Obama to students and teachers at Kenmore Middle School, Arlington, Virginia, March 14th, 2011

I love a good speech, and if there’s anything that The West Wing taught me, it’s that writing speeches with and for the President must be awesome, in all the humbling, sublime, and totally rad meanings of the word.

I mean, who doesn’t want to be so valued for what they have to say?

For that matter, who doesn’t want to write a hit TV show and be likewise valued?

How do we measure the effectiveness of a speech? How do we assess the President, his teachers, and what he or she has learned about communication? We watch. We listen. We discuss. We poll. We comment. We publish in response.

What the President has, I want for my students: a community of writers surrounding him, an authentic purpose for his communication, and an authentic audience ready to compliment, criticize, and push him to do better.

What television writers have, I want for my students: a community of writers surrounding them, an authentic purpose for their communication, and an authentic audience that ready to compliment, criticize, and push them to do better.

President Obama, I have heard you. I acknowledge and value your words. I compliment you on the ideas in your speech. I push you to realize them and push past them to transform our schools, as well as our assessments.

President Obama, you said, “We need to help every child get ahead.  We need to get every child on a path to academic excellence.”

And you said, “We’re going to have to take a series of steps across a broad range of measures to not only target our most troubled schools, but also raise expectations for all our schools.”

And you said, “We need to set better standards to make sure our students are meeting one clear goal –- they’re graduating ready for college and ready for a career.  That’s the goal we need to set. ”

Since 1974, the National Writing Project has worked with countless teachers across our country to develop cadres of teacher professionals expire in the kinds of critical, passionate, and interactive writing practices that allow children from all walks of life to achieve, enjoy, and benefit from academic excellence.

Since 1974, the National Writing Project has taken a series of steps to expand its work and push itself into the information age so that its teacher-consultants can bring new thinking, new literacies, and new methods of composition to all of our schools, including our most troubled ones.

Since 1974, the National Writing Project has set a standard of excellent in writing instruction that is obvious in the work of the teachers and students touched but the project’s work, as well as in the test results of teacher-consultants’ students.

The National Writing Project, since 1974, in a series of progressive steps to improve and innovate writing instruction, has prepared thousands of teachers to help thousands and thousands of students be prepared for college, for their careers, and for a life spent in the pursuit of happiness and the general welfare.

The project has done so for nearly three decades through authentic, inquiry-based professional development for teachers – the kind you don’t find in a canned reading program workshop.

The project has done so for nearly three decades with fair federal funding – the kind not award by an i3 grant, but the kind cut as an earmark by legislators with misaligned tactics for safeguarding our future.

The project has done so for nearly three decades with teachers striving to lift up their students’ voices, not with teachers looking for fiscal incentives for their work with the project.

You signed a bill cutting the National Writing Project as an earmark. I push you to propose and sign a bill or amendment that restores that funding as a recurring, deserving line item in our national education budget.

I’m counting on you to be an authentic audience for me and all the young great American authors working across information age media that you will help us discover, support, and celebrate through the continued work of the National Writing Project.

Give back to our students and teachers the writing community you enjoy. Give back to our students and teachers the National Writing Project.