A three phase study evaluated the comparative effectiveness of various features that comprise a postsecondary writing program. The first phase of the study examined the college composition programs on the 19 California State University (CSU) campuses to identify and describe distinctive program features. The second and third phases measured both students' writing performance and self-perceptions of their writing achievement. Results confirmed the general hypothesis that the organization of composition instruction does matter: certain aspects of postsecondary writing programs are significantly associated with improved student performance and self-perceptions. The following conclusions emerged from an analysis of the relations among the holistic (HS), correctness and efficiency (CE), and development and focus (DF) scores: (1) HS correlated highly with CE in the measurement of writing ability; (2) freshman composition students scored significantly lower in all three categories when only the upper-division certification method was used; (3) CE graded student writing samples more severely than DF; (4) students wrote better in programs that included both instruction and certification; and (5) when key administrators encouraged strong campus-wide writing instruction and assistance, students' writing performance increased. Extensive appendices to this final project report appear in volume II. These include three articles published in the "Council of Writing Program Administrators Journal" reporting on this study, research documents used for this study (faculty questionnaire, campus fact sheet, interview protocols, student self-perception questionnaire, the essay topic, scoring guides, sample scored student essays), and data tables. (JD)