All students learn writing skills
When best teaching practices are used

All students must learn writing skills. The true measure of a writing teacher's work is how well the entire class writes. Achievements of few writing stars can conceal a teacher's incompetence.

That, however, is not the popular view.

If you are teaching public school, unless three-quarters of your English language arts students take AP English, participate in poetry jams, or publish their first novels before their junior prom, you're made to feel you are just another cog in the educational machine.

Homeschooling parents aren't entirely immune from the writing stars syndrome, either. If her kids struggle with writing, people subtly let the homeschooling mom know there must be something wrong with her.

Let's be realistic here.

Any nincompoop can teach a bright, talented youngster who wants to write even when using awful teaching practices. Those kids can (and do) learn writing skills all by themselves regardless of how far short you may fall in the best teaching practices department.

Few students have star quality.

The real challenge is teaching the typical talentless kids without any interest in writing. I think they are a bigger challenge than the truly learning disabled: there are so many more of them.

Remember the old story about the bank robber who, when asked why he robbed banks, said, "Because that's where the money is"?

Well, the reason writing teachers need to focus their attention on average kids who couldn't care less about writing is that is where the majority of students are.

There are other reasons as well.

Competence is a requirement

For one thing, colleges expect the same basic writing skills of all students, whether those students are going into forensic science, or accounting, or planning to be the next poet laureate of the United States.

Similarly, employers expect all students to learn writing skills before they start work — whether they are coming into the management training program or working on the factory floor.

Neither colleges nor employers will be impressed by a high school graduates' accomplishments in poetry or fiction if they can't write a paragraph in which sentences start with capital letters and words of five or fewer letters are correctly spelled.

Basics are the starting point

Good English teachers insist that equipping students with just the basics isn't enough.

I agree.

You ought to teach students more than just basic literacy skills. Go as far beyond the basics as your students' abilities and interests (and your endurance) will allow.

However, every student must learn writing skills and achieve writing competence. If you don't achieve across-the-board results, you haven't done a good job of teaching writing.