In the spring of 2008, Greg Shea, physics teacher at Mt. Hope High School, was proctoring the 11th-grade New England Common Assessment Program science test.

As he wandered among the test-takers, he was blown away by the number of kids leaving the open-ended questions blank. They seemed buffaloed by having to explain their thinking in writing. His heart sank.

Sure enough, when the test results came in, an anemic 19 percent of the kids were “proficient.” (State average: 17 percent.) Shea says, “The biggest driver of the science NECAP scores was the students’ inability to respond to the extended-response questions. We dug into the issue by asking the kids what happened. They told us we hadn’t given them enough opportunity to develop the [needed] skills.”

Then last January, adding insult to injury, the Mt. Hope kids had bombed when the state released the NECAP writing results. The percent proficient dropped from 60 percent the year before to 49. The staff was shocked.

But while teachers battled depression, the instructional leaders huddled, and in February emerged with a radical idea. Henceforth, every department, no exceptions, would create a writing test, an on-demand task to assess non-fiction, information-laden prose. Given only to sophomores, the tests would be graded and count toward the graduation portfolio.

And so the Mt. Hope Common Assessment Program, or Mt.CAP, was born.

Nancy Lavey, the literacy coach, explains, “Each department was assigned a genre reflective, procedural [how you do something], persuasive or report writing. What does a report look like in Drafting 101, foreign language, math? Each department created a task for their genre. Most sophomores did four of these assessments. That’s a lot. There was far less anarchy among the kids than we anticipated.”

But a firestorm broke out among the adults. The art of teaching writing was never an industrial-technology teacher’s forte. Never mind the art or math teacher. Non-ELA teachers were freaking out. But in truth, every field requires writing. Industrial-techies work with procedural manuals all the time. Okay, have the kids write one. Artists apply for grants and write artist statements for gallery shows. Fine, do that. Create a task that is consistent with the department’s teaching goals.

Midwinter the kids took the tests. But making and taking the tests was only half the battle. Every teacher needed to learn how to score them since, henceforth, every teacher would be involved in the kids’ writing.

On March 9, the school devoted an exhausting professional day to grading the Mt.CAP papers. They began by establishing benchmarks for each scoring level: Here’s a pile of terrific papers that “exceed the standard.” Here’s a pile that are proficient, but not stellar, and so forth. When the staff digested the piles of benchmark papers, they started scoring themselves.

At first the difference between different teachers’ scores on the same paper were huge. Oy. So they sat down and discussed in detail qualities of the tests in dispute. Lavey says, “A common thread we were seeing was the students’ inability to create a thesis statement that was supported by facts. The NECAPs demand higher-level thinking: generating a thesis, providing evidence, backing up an argument, explaining reasoning. Writing is really about thinking, so without the thinking, writing becomes general information and skimming surfaces.”

Maureen Gauthier says, “As a business teacher I could see what the English Language Arts teachers wanted and what was good. The non-ELA teachers began to see papers that were nicely written, but had no substance. By the end of that day, we got really good at scoring the papers and doing it quickly and efficiently. It felt like we were taking academic learning walks through student work.” Because teachers rarely see kids’ work outside of their own department, never mind study it for clues to improve kids’ work in their own field.

Jodi-Lee Neves, English Language Arts teacher, nods, “More than anything the Mt.CAP has informed our instruction. It’s making us go back and re-think what we’ve done in the past. Now we’re saying: Show me the thinking. Show me the money. What is the prompt really asking? Think before you write, speak or act. These are teenagers! They need to learn to think before they do anything!” So true.

Now the entire school is working together on that thinking problem, using writing as the method. Clever and effective.

Gauthier says “Ultimately that was the best professional development I’ve ever had, because I learned so much.”

Last spring, the state took its second science NECAP test. Once again Shea proctored. “In the 90 days leading up to the science NECAP, we’d been demanding and practicing: stop and think. Then write about it. So where the kids had been leaving blanks (on the tests), you could see they were all making attempts, at least. We’d eliminated the intimidation factor.”

Just this week, their efforts were rewarded with an 8 percent gain in science, up to 27 percent proficient. (The state improved 3 percent, from 17 to 20.) The scores are still low, but Mt. Hope’s science teachers are high-fiveing. They’re making progress. A full year of Mt.CAP assessments will surely boost their scores even more.

Julia Steiny, a former member of the Providence School Board, consults for government agencies and schools; she is co-director of Information Works!, Rhode Island’s school-accountability project. She can be reached at juliasteiny@gmail.com, or c/o EdWatch, The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902.