College, Career, and Community Writers Program

About
The National Writing Project (NWP) designed the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) with teacher-leaders from across the country. The goal is to assure more teachers have the ability to teach college and career-ready writing—with a specific emphasis on writing arguments based on nonfiction texts; an important skill every young adult needs.
C3WP provides scaffolded teaching and formative assessment resources that support the development of students' argument writing and prepares youth for college, career, and community engagement.
Impact
The C3WP evaluation is one of the largest and most rigorous studies about teacher professional development to find evidence of impact:
- An overwhelming number of teachers (76% across 22 districts) consistently participated in at least 45 hours of professional development. This significantly impacted:
- the instruction students received; and,
- the proficiency of students on complex writing tasks such as connecting evidence to an argument.
- C3WP students outperformed students in control districts on four attributes of argument writing—content, structure, stance, and conventions.
An SRI International research brief can be found here .
Implementation
C3WP provides 45 hours of professional development each year through school or district-embedded institutes; classroom demonstrations, co-teaching, and coaching; and ongoing study of effective practices in academic writing instruction, current research, and professional literature.
The program features systematic formative assessment to inform next steps in instruction, including the Using Sources Tool, which supports teachers in analyzing how students make and support claims using evidence from sources.
C3WP's instructional resources focus on: reading and analyzing multiple perspectives on important issues, developing strong claims, and effectively using nonfiction texts as evidence. These resources are designed as models that teachers can adapt for and integrate into their curriculum.
From 2013–2016, with funding from a U.S. Department of Education's Investing in Innovation validation grant and additional funding from the Rural School and Community Trust and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the NWP implemented C3WP focusing on teachers and students in rural middle and high schools. Twelve Writing Project sites in ten states partnered with 44 rural school districts to implement the program, which served over 400 teachers and 25,000 students. SRI's research design for the evaluation was to randomly assign the school districts to either the C3WP program or a delayed treatment group. The 22 districts in the delayed treatment group received the CRWP professional development at the conclusion of the two-year program evaluation.
Questions
For more information please contact CRWP@nwp.org
NOTE: below are the lists of sites with current 2017-18 C3WP grant awards.
Advanced Institute to Scale Up C3WP Grantees
- Red Mountain Writing Project, Alabama
- Wiregrass Writing Project, Alabama
- Great Bear Writing Project, Arkansas
- Northwest Arkansas Writing Project, Arkansas
- Bay Area Writing Project, California
- Inland Area Writing Project, California
- Redwood Writing Project, California
- San Joaquin Valley Writing Project, California
- UC Irvine Writing Project, California
- UC Merced Writing Project, California
- Connecticut Writing Project - Fairfield, Connecticut
- District of Columbia Area Writing Project, District of Columbia
- Delaware Writing Project, Delaware
- Tampa Bay Area Writing Project, Florida
- Eastern Illinois Writing Project, Illinois
- Illinois Writing Project, Illinois
- Indiana Writing Project, Indiana
- Northwest Indiana Writing Project, Indiana
- Flint Hills Writing Project, Kansas
- Morehead Writing Project, Kentucky
- National Writing Project of Acadiana, Louisiana
- Western Massachusetts Writing Project, Massachusetts
- Eastern Shore Writing Project, Maryland
- Lake Michigan Writing Project, Michigan
- Red Cedar Writing Project, Michigan
- Minnesota Writing Project, Minnesota
- Elk River Writing Project, Montana
- Nebraska Writing Project, Nebraska
- Bisti Writing Project, New Mexico
- Southern Nevada Writing Project, Nevada
- Genesee Valley Writing Project, New York
- Western New York Writing Project, New York
- National Writing Project at Kent State University, Ohio
- Oregon WP at Southern Oregon University, Oregon
- Oregon WP at University of Oregon, Oregon
- Oregon WP Collaborative at George Fox, Oregon
- Endless Mountains Writing Project, Oregon
- Penn State Lehigh Valley Writing Project, Pennsylvania
- Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project, Pennsylvania
- Santee-Wateree Writing Project, South Carolina
- Pearl of the Concho Writing Project, South Carolina
- Northern Virginia Writing Project, Virginia
- Shenandoah Valley Writing Project, Virginia
- Tidewater Writing Project, Virginia
- Fox Valley Writing Project, Wisconsin
- National Writing Project at West Virginia University, West Virginia
Professional Development in a High-Need School Grantees
- Central Arizona Writing Project, Arizona
- Northern California Writing Project, California
- San Diego Area Writing Project, California
- UCLA Writing Project, California
- Denver Writing Project, Colorado
- Connecticut Writing Project - Storrs, Connecticut
- Boise State University Writing Project , Idaho
- Chicago Area Writing Project, Illinois
- IUS Writing Project, Indiana
- Maryland Writing Project, Maryland
- Chippewa River Writing Project, Michigan
- Gateway Writing Project, Missouri
- Greater Kansas City Writing Project, Missouri
- Missouri Writing Project, Missouri
- Live Oak Writing Project, Mississippi
- UNC Charlotte Writing Project, North Carolina
- National Writing Project in New Hampshire, New Hampshire
- Kean University National Writing Project, New Jersey
- Hudson Valley Writing Project, New York
- Long Island Writing Project, New York
- Oklahoma State University Writing Project, Oklahoma
- Philadelphia Writing Project, Pennsylvania
- Western Pennsylvania Writing Project, Pennsylvania
- Upstate Writing Project, South Carolina
- Central Texas Writing Project, Texas
- Coastal Bend Writing Project, Texas
- San Antonio Writing Project, Texas
- Central Washington Writing Project, Washington
- University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Writing Project, Wisconsin
- Central West Virginia Writing Project, West Virginia