Strategies Common to Effective Middle Grades Programs
Researchers have studied both high-performing and low-performing middle schools to answer the following questions:
- Why do some middle school students perform poorly on standardized assessments?
- Why do high school students require so much remediation?
- Why are some middle schools effective and others are not even when they may have similar student populations?
Findings from the research indicate that high-performing middle schools have managed to overcome the organizational problems that traditionally hurt high challenge schools. Effective middle schools provide:
- Resources for rigorous instruction
- Support for teachers, administrators, and students
- Relationships that foster student achievement
The success of high-performing middle schools is encouraging because the health of a school is easier to improve than the socioeconomic character of a community.1
The National Center for Educational Accountability identifies (Outside Source) two fundamental beliefs about the qualities of a higher performing school:
- Consistency: Higher performing schools meet a more stringent set of criteria than the schools listed . . . some of which only appear successful in that single grade or year.
- Fairness:
- Higher Performing Schools are compared with other schools in the same state with similar school-wide demographic levels.
- The analysis of performance focuses on students who have been in the school long enough for their achievement level to reflect the effects of that school. In the middle and high school analysis, the prior achievement of each school’s students is considered, so that the "value-added" of the school can be assessed.2
The degree of fidelity in implementing a comprehensive strategy for middle grades reform is also key.
Results of this longitudinal study indicated, "across subject areas, adolescents in highly implemented schools had higher achievement (as measured by the Iowa Test of Basic Skills and the California Test of Basic Skills) than those in non-implemented schools and substantially better than those in partially implemented schools’ . . . ‘Broad-range enhancements and adjustment are not obtained until implementation is quite mature, comprehensive, and conducted with a high degree of fidelity."3
Elective programs such as AVID Advancement Via Individual Determination (Outside Source) help low-income and historically disadvantaged youths who show potential (a 2.0 to 3.5 grade point average) to prepare for college. These types of programs prepare students with study skills, leadership opportunities, college awareness, and goal setting. The programs have demonstrated results. For example, middle grades students in the AVID program enroll in algebra at a 42 percent rate, whereas the national average is 24 percent.
In the Spotlight
Holtville Middle School, Holtville Unified School District
To provide access to advanced mathematics classes, this high-poverty school near the California-Mexico border employs a teacher who lives in Arizona to teach students. A Viacom camera is used on both sides and a document camera is used allowing the image to come through on the television. The school is fortunate to have fiber-optic lines coming into the district which is helpful. The teacher had to get a business line in his house, so he could have enough capacity to broadcast to the school.
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Footnotes
1 W. K. Hoy and J. W. Hannum, “Middle School Climate: An Empirical Assessment of Organizational Health and Student Achievement,” Educational Administration Quarterly, 33(3), 290-311.
2 Higher Performing Schools and Districts (Outside Source). Austin, Tex.: National Center for Educational Accountability.
3 Vincent A. Anfara, Jr., and Richard P. Lipka,Relating the Middle School Concept to Student Achievement (PDF; Outside Source), Middle School Journal, Vol. 35, No. 1 (September 2003), 3.
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