“Nothing Continued to Happen”: Addressing Attrition, Lack of Fidelity, and Other Barriers to Implementation in High-Poverty, High-Mobility Urban Settings

The demand for writing skills is increasing in academic settings and careers. Recent changes to learning standards and high-stakes testing have placed writing at the center of learning. In response to principals’ request, a complex, elegant five-school study was conceived, but collapsed during rollout. In the aftermath, one principal requested support for teacher development for writing instruction. To this end, six 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade teachers of English and Language Arts at an urban, public elementary school received 5 days (30 h) of professional development in evidence-based writing instruction. The professional development included student strategies for using the writing process, strategies for analyzing prompts, and foundational writing instruction for both persuasive and informational essays. The writing instruction provided was self-regulated strategy development, an evidence-based writing intervention (What Works Clearinghouse, Teaching elementary school students to be effective writers: Educator’s practice guide. http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/practiceguide.aspx?sid=17 , 2012). Researchers measured fidelity of implementation; student writing outcomes including essay length, genre elements, and holistic quality; and social validity. In this chapter, along with the results of this study, we discuss the challenges of conducting rigorous scientific research in high-poverty, high-mobility urban settings with a focus on the ethical questions and considerations when working in settings with multiple competing priorities.