ACT survey conclusion=More grammar instruction

Today my copy of Aligning Postsecondary Expectations and High School Practice: The Gap Defined arrived in the mail. This ACT analysis of over 35,000 surveys completed by teachers from middle school through post-secondary institutions, including over 7,000 English teachers, yielded ten action steps for policymakers. One flummoxes me:

"Make sure that students attain the skills necessary for effective writing." OK, so far. But here is the next sentence: "The survey responses of post-secondary English/writing instructors suggest that high school language arts teachers should focus more on punctuation and grammar skills to better prepare their students for college-level expectations in college composition courses."

The explanation is that high school teachers ranked topic and idea development higher than postsecondary instructors, who ranked mechanics "more frequently among the most important groups of skills for success in an entry-level, credit-bearing postsecondary English/writing course."

My hope is to better understand this surprising finding by reading ACT National Curriculum Survey: 2005-2006, the booklet that accompanied the policy report. Perhaps I won't be so uneasy after I learn more about the specific survey questions and answers. My second hope, though, is that policy makers will not jump to conclusions based on a single statement that advocates greater focus on grammar and punctuation per se. Policy makers need to be helped to understand the importance of teaching grammar and punctuation in the context of authentic writing.