A two-part study intended to investigate what constitutes successful teacher response to student writing is described in this report. The described study consisted of a survey of response practices of 560 elementary and secondary school teachers who were among the most successful in their communities as judged by directors of the sites of the National Writing Projects, and an examination of the day-to-day response practices of two successful ninth grade writing teachers in the San Francisco area. The report is divided into chapters that discuss the following topics: (1) survey design and procedures for conducting the survey and the ethnography; (2) survey results for the successful teachers and for their students at the secondary level; (3) results from observations in the two ninth grade classrooms; (4) the values that underlie the response process; (5) an analysis of the structure of the response that involves the entire class; (6) an examination of the written response, focusing on two students in each class and how they make sense of the written responses they receive; and (7) the study's conclusions. The report includes a separate volume of appendixes containing, among other things, the student survey of the National Writing Project, the survey of Excellence in Teaching of the National Writing Project, a list of state projects that participate in the National Writing Project, samples of student writing and teacher response, and the teaching philosophies of the two participating ninth grade teachers. (HOD)