We humans have a knack for doing things the hard way. We seem to have some genetic compulsion to look for complicated ways to solve our  problems. Time and again we have found out that the best solutions are the ones which, because of their simplicity, we have overlooked, while sweating through one frustrating effort after another, only to discover that the plain path to success was there before us all the time.
Take for example the problem of how to improve schools. Millions are spent year after year in the effort to better students performance in schools but from one year to another the judgment seem to be that we haven't made much progress in that effort.
But couldn't it be that the solution to the problem of schools inability to effectively educate all children well, may just be as simple as teaching students to master the art of writing well?
There is no purposeful endeavor that will not benefit from clear thinking and what's more effective than writing to help expose muddled thinking!
"Writing could get into corners that other teaching tools couldn't reach" wrote Connoly & Vilardi in their book Writing to Learn Mathematics and Science. And we will certainly concur with the view that there are a lot of corners in schools that need to be reached.
Schools in this country have been subjected to tons of abuse about their general lack of effectiveness in educating children. We do not agree with much of the rhetoric but we believe that schools could improve their credibility as places of learning by giving greater attention to helping students to learn how to write well.
 In his book Writing Matters Across the Curriculum, Ernest Spencer described a study of the state of writing in Scotland (1983). He concluded that "many pupils have no sense of being taught how to write and are vague about the purpose of written work". There is little evidence to conclude that such is not the existing condition in our schools at the turn of the 21st century.
It is our belief that teaching students how to write effectively in all grades and by all teachers, if given high priority, will result in unprecedented gains in students performance nation-wide. We challenge all teachers in the elementary and secondary schools to begin a writing crusade in their school. We promise that we will use this medium to  document the unprecedented gains that will be made as a consequence.
We invite all to join us in this effort to better schools through writing. It's that simple.