California Department of Education
Taking Center Stage – Act II

Access to accelerated academic interventions

Disadvantaged students and those from low socioeconomic backgrounds often come to middle school with learning deficits. However, the practice of tracking these students into remedial classes will not close the achievement gap. Instead, underperforming students need accelerated academic interventions that give them more than one year of academics in a school year so that they can catch up to grade level.

In effective middle schools, teaching teams create schedules that include enough flexibility to allow students to move into regular classes as soon as they master intervention. For example, when both the regular seventh-grade math and accelerated intervention classes occur during the same period, then students can transfer out of the intervention class without changing their entire schedule.

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Access to advanced program (gifted and talented education—GATE)

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