How NWP Works

The National Writing Project (NWP) works by building and sustaining local leadership for literacy improvement. Funding for the NWP supports a network of more than 200 local writing project sites serving all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Federal funding for the NWP network is an investment in a national infrastructure that recruits our most outstanding educators to develop, disseminate, and implement innovative, research-based practices that help all students to succeed. You can meet some of these educators, as well as the national programs and networks they use to share their practices nationwide, in one of the NWP's previous Annual Reports, at the right. This report illustrates how NWP teachers help spread effective practices nationally while still devoting themselves to achievement in their local schools and districts. This is one of the added values of a national network.

The National Network

The NWP network represents a national improvement infrastructure that now reaches all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Through NWP’s network of local writing project sites, expert teachers, higher-education faculty, school administrators, and community members work together in sustained efforts to improve the teaching of writing and improve learning in their local schools. These thousands of expert teachers across the NWP network serve as professional development resources to their colleagues in all subject areas and at all grade levels. They live and work in the communities they serve, understanding their unique needs, curriculum, and aspirations. They are locally available, yet they are also informed and supported by a national knowledge-base about effective practices and strategies for implementation. It is the national network that enables these teacher-leaders to develop and share promising and innovative teaching practices on a national scale.

Since 1991, the NWP has been an authorized program within the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The modest federal investment in NWP provides core funding for local writing project sites as well as competitive supplemental funding and technical assistance to promote innovation and build capacity to meet the demands of a 21st century education.

The national network conducts an annual review of each writing project site to assure quality and provide accountability. In addition, the national network supports programs and initiatives that extend and strengthen the work of local sites, bringing site leaders together to collaborate on solutions to common challenges, and making those solutions available to every site in the network.

NWP is a national improvement infrastructure that provides access to high-quality professional development for school districts nationwide.