The drive in the late 1990s for an evidence-based approach to both policy and practice throughout public services has been encoded in a range of articles, operationalised in funded organisations, and implemented through government policy. This paper intends to review some of those articles, organizations and education policies to give an overview of the way in which the approach has been constructed and to make problematic some of the underlying assumptions.

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Based on work undertaken in a joint international project focusing on the process and teaching of writing in English/US classrooms, this article looks at the impact government initiatives on assessment and accountability have on classroom practices and the process of writing. These initiatives are encoded in the Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs) in England and the Proficiency Tests in the US. The first year of the project has gathered and analyzed data from a longitudinal study of writing in the US, focused on the state of Ohio, and a series of contrasting case studies in England.

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