When leaders in Lewisville Independent School District in Texas saw the district’s writing scores on STAAR — the Texas standardized tests introduced in 2011 — they panicked. They weren’t alone. The response from many neighboring districts, and from some of Lewisville’s own campuses, was a renewed commitment to summer and after-school drill-and-kill tutorials. The term “drill-and-kill” is a fitting moniker. Some campuses extend the oppositional language further, naming their programs STAAR Boot Camp and STAAR Wars. It’s each individual student against the test. And students, too often, are the losers. After two years, Lewisville’s scores stagnated. Frustration was high; teachers and students burned out. As the district’s secondary literacy and language arts administrator, I knew we were at a turning point: Do we double-down on