Nancy Bailey is a retired teacher who has a deep understanding of teaching. Hers is the voice of experience.
She writes here about recent innovations that have complicated the teaching of writing.
Bailey writes:
Critics slam teachers and public schools for low reading scores. Much of that criticism is wrong and misses the real problem. The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Science of Reading (SoR) both seriously hamper children’s writing (their voices) and, in turn, their ability to learn to read.
Writing and reading are siblings. They complement each other, and for most children, if one isn’t working, the other isn’t either. That’s why, as children learn to read, they should be learning to write. Good reading and writing instruction involves interactions and feedback from teachers, students, and parents.
Below is a reminder of what makes a good writing program, but first I want to address the problem.
The National Reading Panel, which led to the SoR, failed to adequately research reading (See Yatvin, 2003). They ignored writing!
In 2023, Stephen Sawchuck of Education Week wrote about this omission: How Does Writing Fit Into the ‘Science of Reading’? His points are valid, but his focus on breaking writing into explicit skills, much like the SoR breaks up reading, misses the mark.
The Science of Reading isn’t settled, since believers finally want to address writing. They sound like writing instruction never existed, calling for a Science of Writing. Adding “science” makes it sound legit and lends itself to for-profit programs.
While reading Sawchuck’s report, it’s easy to picture newly minted, skill-oriented, expensive online writing programs for states to add to their already crowded list of online decoding programs.
In fact, another Ed. Week report (Schwartz, 2026) indicates that New Hampshire is getting $8M for evidence-based writing that will include online programming.
Arizona is getting $11.5M for the Arizona Education Foundation to partner with the Self-Regulated Strategy Development (SRSD). This includes Science of Writing online courses for purchase to teach teachers to teach students to master self-regulation to work on their own.
I would argue that none of that is necessary for children to learn to write (and read better). What’s needed is paper and pencil and adults who care about student writing, will read and value it, and help children improve upon it.
Teachers used to address writing well. They focused on it more and better. What happened?
Remember Common Core and David Coleman’s toxic words about student voice?
David Coleman, a businessman and codeveloper of the CCSS, who now makes millions as the head of the College Board, denounced student voice.
Around 2015, Coleman, discussing student narrative writing, stating to a group of teachers:
You grow up in this world, and you realize people don’t really give a shit about what you feel and what you think.
Along with this, SoR enthusiasts largely ignored the critical connections between writing and learning to read. The heavy focus on decoding and direct instruction still permeate early learning classrooms, and writing has been an afterthought.
Coleman was wrong, of course. The most critical part of writing is student voice. The SoR folks are wrong too. Skills are secondary to writing well. With both writing and reading, children must first understand what’s in it for them.
Please open the link and read Bailey’s explanation of the best approaches to teaching students to write and to find their own voice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I share Nancy’s views on language arts. Reading and writing are partners. When students read, it supports their writing, and when they write, the reverse is true. Reading is a receptive thinking activity, and writing is an expressive thinking activity. I have always taught the two skills together because it leads to meaningful, relational instruction that builds both skills simultaneously, and I applied this type of cognitive instruction with second language learners with excellent results.
This reciprocal approach respects the fact that the instruction always has meaning, and meaning leads to thinking. All of which are essential in teaching and learning. It was particularly helpful to more mature second language learners that were cognitively intact, but whose skills were years behind, as it is respectful of their intelligence and maturity. It allows them to make meaningful progress fairly quickly, and it gave students a sense of accomplishment and agency. Reading and responding activities encourage student engagement and active learning. In my opinion one of the reasons that on-line canned instruction has been somewhat unsuccessful is due to the fact it is passive and generally not engaging.
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Here’s what I know: Before I retired students told me “I hate reading. Why do we have to write?” It was like ripping their fingernails out. The common consensus was, “They won’t let us write what we want. We would respond ‘our way’ but we know it will be wrong. And they ask us the same stupid questions (except their words, one student especially expressed her disgust for reading and writing) and never ask us if we liked what we read, connected to what we read, or stuff that made sense to us. THEY pick what they can read, e.g., “Oh no Tommy, your lexile number prohibits you from reading about dinosaurs, so here is this book on colors.” THEY test them to death so reading becomes this hated thing. THEY time them on how fast the kids respond. And writing is, “How long is a sentence? How many sentences do I write until I am done?” The best writing was when I told them, “You know, just write. Don’t worry about grammar or conventions; tell the story — your story.” I remember a student I had in Saturday school was so excited about telling his story (he could not spell but wrote phonetically) and it was great. The sparkle in his eyes when I told him his writing was great (I had asked the kids — rather than making them sit and face forward for four hours — no talking because Saturday school was punitive — we will punish them!) to create a society and we were going to write a story about a society and each chapter was about what the society needed to survive. Uh, gee, silly me, I used the time to help kids rather than remind them that they were stupid and bad! This young man wrote about the “money system” of the society. All I know is you get the best when you treat the kids like their words are powerful just the way they say them. A grammatical correct story that is boring is just that. A great story loaded with mistakes will always be a great story. And as I told them, “Just write. Say what you need to say. Read what you want. And I will be by your side to guide you.” I loved my creative writing in school. I loved waiting to get my Scholastic books I ordered. I told the kids, “If I were you, I think I would have failed by now.” And to end this, if I counted the many ways I was teaching “wrong” and not abiding by the “standards” I would be a very rich person. Kids are not ‘nuts and bolts” to be standardized. They are creative beings stymied by a system that suppresses their thought processes. It’s my story and I am sticking to it.
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Coleman’s suggestion that no one cares how a student feels is enough to send him to the end of the row. Didn’t he go to kindergarten? Didn’t he watch Bambi (if you can’t say something good, don’t say nothing at all)? What a self righteous piece of human fecal matter.
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