Overview of The Next Level Project
The Next Level—What Colleges Expect from Your Writing, a writing skills booklet for high school students, was published by the Association of Texas Colleges and Universities (ATCU). The booklet helps prepare students for college by demonstrating good writing techniques and general academic expectations. ATCU distributed over 300,000 copies of The Next Level to Texas public high schools at no charge. To support classroom use of the publication, college campuses around the state hosted teacher-training workshops. In Summer 2006, The Next Level print materials became available on the World Wide Web. Broadening its offerings to include professional development for teachers, an expanded site went online in Spring 2007 at nextlevelonline.org.
Summary of Book Content
The Next Level was originally published by the Independent Colleges of Indiana for Indiana high school students. With the permission of the Indiana group, ATCU revised the text and incorporated new writing samples to customize the booklet for Texas students.
Part I is an overview of the process and elements of good writing. An editorial panel of Texas university and high school faculty suggested revisions to Indiana's text to better reflect the approach to writing instruction found on Texas campuses.
Part II consists of sample essays written predominantly by first-year students in Texas community colleges, public universities, and independent institutions. An advisory panel of thirteen higher education faculty members collected the essays after meeting to decide what types of assignments would be most helpful to students preparing for college. The Next Level includes samples of the following assignments from composition and general Humanities courses: personal narrative, critical analysis, persuasion/argument, technical/business writing, research projects, and essay exams. Whenever possible, the instructor's grade, grading criteria, and assignment are reproduced or described. The instructor's comments appear in the margins.
The Next Level Teacher's Guide presents lesson plans to help educators incorporate the booklet into the curriculum. Each lesson lists relevant objectives from Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) for English IV.
Collaborative Support
ATCU members, with partners from the public education arena and private foundations, have guided the project. ATCU membership is comprised of presidents and chancellors of institutions from every sector of Texas higher education-public universities, community/junior colleges, independent institutions, public technical colleges, and health-related campuses. They contributed seed money, helped raise grant funds, furnished the expertise of their faculties, provided writing samples from their students, and supported the workshops. They view development of The Next Level as an important step in building more bridges between high school and college classrooms.
Serving as advisers to the workshop initiative were representatives from the Texas Education Agency, Texas sites of the National Writing Project, and the regional office of the College Board. High school teachers and administrators contributed editorial input and workshop strategies. Funded by grants from the Houston Endowment Inc. and the Sid Richardson Foundation, The Next Level is a valuable educational tool produced without the need of state funding.