Thirty years of research confirms the beneficial effects that journalism studies have on the academic achievement of students.  Improved literacy has an obvious positive spillover effect in all academic content areas.  Despite these benefits, student journalism programs are on the decline in exactly those communities where we are most dramatically failing to educate our kids to think critically and write effectively.  This is especially true of the students in the “low-socio-economic subgroup,” only 16% of whom scored as Proficient and only 1% as Above Proficient on the writing section of the 2006 California State standardized tests.

Despite this urgent problem and disparity, writing remains the “silent R.”  Educator and researcher James Moffett believes that “writing in school has to be learned very much the same way it is practiced outside of school.  That means the writer has a reason to write, an intended audience, and control of subject and form.  It also means the composing is staged across various phases of rumination, investigation, consultation with others, drafting, feedback, revision, and perfecting.”  Journalism naturally lends itself to this type of process by offering students the opportunity to: choose subjects that matter most to them; write for an authentic audience; think critically across disciplines; question the reliability of sources, in accordance with journalistic ethics.