The school district is rewriting its writing curriculum.

The new program will be matched by an initiative to focus teachers on their writing instruction. While students have been off for the summer, administrators and teachers have been busy outlining their plan.

“There’s a lot we’ve done in terms of writing in district over the summer,” said Assistant Superintendent Chip McGee.

The district is concerned about the writing scores of its students on the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP, exam. The scores are above the state average, but below peer school districts, which are similar-sized, affluent suburban systems, according to McGee.

Reading and math scores, meanwhile, are in line with district expectations.

“Our goal is for Bedford students to be as good at writing as they are at reading and math,” McGee said.

Although writing has improved annually since 2005, McGee said there is still room for improvement.

“They have improved somewhat over the years relative to our peers, but I think Bedford expects to be as strong as any district in the state in writing, and we’re not,” he said.

One of the first steps toward this goal was a writing workshop run out of Columbia University that was hosted at Bedford High School for several days in July. Fifty-two teachers attended the session, McGee said.

The goal of the workshops was helping teachers pinpoint the areas in which students need more work and explanation from the teacher.

The district has hired a writing coach to spearhead the effort as the school year gets under way. Detta Porat, a former second-grade teacher at the Memorial Elementary School, has been tapped to fill that position. “She’s kind of like a quarterback coach,” McGee said. “She’s not the head coach.

Porat will work as a parttime consultant with the district this year, with a fee of $30,000. A federal grant is picking up the tab this year. Next year and the following, she will be a full-time consultant, with the cost split between the district and grant money. In the final, fourth year, she will go back to a part-time status.

The writing coach will have two main responsibilities. In her coaching role she will be working closely with teachers in the classroom, both sitting in and giving them feedback after a regular class and teaching a model lesson herself.

Outside the classroom, she will be answering questions teachers might have at their grade-level meetings, McGee said. Also, a second purpose for the writing coach is the revision of the writing curriculum from kindergarten to the elementary grades. The coach will lead a committee in that effort.

The curriculum revision will be for kindergarten through fourth grade at the three elementary schools in Bedford, according to Cara Procek, the curriculum coordinator for language arts and social studies in all the grades below high school.

The McKelvie Intermediate School, with grades 5 and 6, is not included because it is in its second year of a new program called Reading Street, which has writing components to it. Lurgio Middle School, meanwhile, is working on incorporating writing into subject areas like English, science and social studies, Procek said.

As for Bedford High School, it too has a new writing curriculum by virtue of the fact that it is a still new school in the second of a three-year, phased opening. “A logical place to sort of begin this focused effort was K to 4,” Procek said.