 CHAPTER 70--STRENGTHENING AND IMPROVEMENT OF ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY 
                                 SCHOOLS
 
             SUBCHAPTER X--PROGRAMS OF NATIONAL SIGNIFICANCE
 
                    Part K--National Writing Project
 
Sec. 8331. Findings

    The Congress finds that--
        (1) the United States faces a crisis in writing in schools and 
    in the workplace;
        (2) the writing problem has been magnified by the rapidly 
    changing student populations and the growing number of at-risk 
    students due to limited English proficiency;
        (3) over the past two decades, universities and colleges across 
    the country have reported increasing numbers of entering freshmen 
    who are unable to write at a level equal to the demands of college 
    work;
        (4) American businesses and corporations are concerned about the 
    limited writing skills of entry-level workers, and a growing number 
    of executives are reporting that advancement was denied to them due 
    to inadequate writing abilities;
        (5) the writing problem has been magnified by the rapidly 
    changing student populations in the Nation's schools and the growing 
    number of students who are at risk because of limited English 
    proficiency;
        (6) writing and reading are both fundamental to learning, yet 
    writing has been historically neglected in the schools and colleges, 
    and most teachers in the United States elementary schools, secondary 
    schools, and colleges have not been trained to teach writing;
        (7) since 1973, the only national program to address the writing 
    problem in the Nation's schools has been the National Writing 
    Project, a network of collaborative university-school programs whose 
    goal is to improve the quality of student writing and the teaching 
    of writing at all grade levels and to extend the uses of writing as 
    a learning process through all disciplines;
        (8) the National Writing Project offers summer and school year 
    inservice teacher training programs and a dissemination network to 
    inform and teach teachers of developments in the field of writing;
        (9) the National Writing Project is a nationally recognized and 
    honored nonprofit organization that recognizes that there are 
    teachers in every region of the country who have developed 
    successful methods for teaching writing and that such teachers can 
    be trained and encouraged to train other teachers;
        (10) the National Writing Project has become a model for 
    programs to improve teaching in such other fields as mathematics, 
    science, history, literature, performing arts, and foreign 
    languages;
        (11) the National Writing Project teacher-teaching-teachers 
    program identifies and promotes what is working in the classrooms of 
    the Nation's best teachers;
        (12) the National Writing Project teacher-teaching-teachers 
    project is a positive program that celebrates good teaching 
    practices and good teachers and through its work with schools 
    increases the Nation's corps of successful classroom teachers;
        (13) evaluations of the National Writing Project document the 
    positive impact the project has had on improving the teaching of 
    writing, student performance, and student thinking and learning 
    ability;
        (14) the National Writing Project programs offer career-long 
    education to teachers, and teachers participating in the National 
    Writing Project receive graduate academic credit;
        (15) each year over 100,000 teachers voluntarily seek training 
    in National Writing Project intensive summer institutes and 
    workshops and school year in-service programs through one of the 154 
    regional sites located in 45 States, the Commonwealth of Puerto 
    Rico, and in 4 sites that serve United States teachers in United 
    States dependent and independent schools;
        (16) 250 National Writing Project sites are needed to establish 
    regional sites to serve all teachers;
        (17) private foundation resources, although generous in the 
    past, are inadequate to fund all of the National Writing Project 
    sites needed and the future of the program is in jeopardy without 
    secure financial support;
        (18) independent evaluation studies have found the National 
    Writing Project to be highly cost effective compared to other 
    professional development programs for teachers; and
        (19) during 1991, the first year of Federal support for the 
    National Writing Project, the National Writing Project matched the 
    $1,951,975 in Federal support with $9,485,504 in matching funds from 
    State, local, and other sources.

(Pub. L. 89-10, title X, Sec. 10991, as added Pub. L. 103-382, title I, 
Sec. 101, Oct. 20, 1994, 108 Stat. 3859.)
