Where’s the content?

True or false: What a high school student says in an essay is less important than how he or she says it. Educator Will Fitzhugh contends that in American high schools too much emphasis is placed on style and subjective feelings in written work and too little on factual content. The tendency is reinforced by the new written portion of the SAT, whose graders are instructed to ignore the content of students’ essays in favor of a more “holistic” assessment. This kind of instruction, Fitzhugh contends, is not preparing students for the kinds of writing they’ll be expected to do in college. Find his essay in the latest edition of ASCD’s Educational Leadership.