Site leaders at the Southern Arizona Writing Project needed to increase their pool of summer institute applicants, so they created a plan to recruit early. They invited interested teachers, principals, and district administrators to attend their "Slice of SAWP" on the last day of the summer institute. The site sent out acceptance letters…

Both curricular reformers and writing specialists believe a connection exists between critical thinking and writing, however two obstacles have prevented any conclusion from emerging. One is that there is no established shared understanding of what "critical thinking" means. The other is that no one knows how to measure it, even though…