I'll probably post this message again later, after I have put the research project I am currently working on out on the web. However, I am looking for schools or a school district that would be interested in working with me in an attempt to describe the syntax of students' writing. In effect, this would mean collecting samples (anonymous, but preferably tied to national test scores) that I could analyze and put on the web. Although collecting students' writing raises many ethical and legal questions, one of the things I am interested in is simply students' revisions of Roy O'Donnell's "Aluminum" passage.  See:
http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ENL111/Syntax/SSSAlum.htm 

Because the Aluminum passage simply involves a revision of someone else's text, questions of students' revealing personal information, etc. are significantly reduced. The project I am working on involves 93 revisions done by my college Freshmen ― rare is the student who could indentify which of the 93 he or she wrote.
     Although I find my current project fascinating in itself ― for reasons I will explain when I put it out, I am interested in getting revisions from grades 6-12 so that I can explore the differences in syntactic encoding. I am, in a sense, preparing the ground for some of that research that Bill McCleary referred to. But we need to know more both about natural syntactic development and about what to look for in the research.
     Anyone who is interested in helping, or who wants to know more, can contact me off list at [log in to unmask] 

I have, by the way, also put a guest book in the KISS grammar site. See:

http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/GB.htm