Teaching Writing in the United States has progressed through several approaches during the history of education in the United States.At its most basic level, writing is how we keep track of the thoughts that are important to us. From the ancient Egyptians, to the monks of the Middle Ages, to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, writing has been used to capture thought, from the mundane to the profound. In schools, writing serves not only to record, but to refine and synthesize thinking . As school effectiveness researcher Doug Reeves discovered, "The association between writing and performance in other academic disciplines [is] striking, and gets to the heart of the curriculum choices teachers must make."