California Department of Education
Taking Center Stage – Act II

Initiatives Crosswalk

Recommendation 5—Relationships

Use this chart to research key components of state and national initiatives that relate to relationships.

Recommendation 5—Relationships. Foster close relationships for accountability and engagement among students and with adults who share extended time through grade-level, subject-area, or interdisciplinary small learning communities. Provide an advisory program to ensure that each middle grades student has frequent contact with an adult mentor to plan and assess his or her academic, personal, and social development.

Initiatives that Support Student Achievement
Key Components that Relate to this TCSII Recommendation

Essential Program Components for School Improvement:

 
No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Highly qualified teachers
National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform (Outside Source) California Schools to Watch™-Taking Center Stage (STW-TCS) School Self-Study and Rating Rubric
(DOC; 413KB; 9pp.)

Developmental Responsiveness #1 and 5

  1. The staff creates a personalized environment that supports each student's intellectual, ethical, social, and physical development.
  2. Teachers use an interdisciplinary approach to reinforce important concepts, skills, and address real-world problems.
Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID) (Outside Source)

Essential Elements #2, 7, 8, and 11

  1. AVID program participants, both students and staff, must choose to participate.
  2. Collaboration, including structured AVID tutorials (as opposed to one-on-one) tutoring or homework study sessions), is used to bring students together to develop their critical thinking skills and enable them to take responsibility for their own learning.
  3. A sufficient number of tutors (recommended ratio is 1 tutor to 7 students) must be available in the AVID class to facilitate student access to rigorous curriculum. Tutors should be students from colleges and universities, and they must be trained to implement the WIC-R (writing, inquiry, collaboration and reading) methodologies used in AVID.
  4. The school must have an active interdisciplinary site team that meets regularly and collaborates on issues of student access to and success in rigorous college preparatory classes. This site team should routinely set site goals, develop and implement a site plan, and document evidence to illustrate support for students’ access to and success in rigorous curriculum.
GEAR UP (Outside Source) School Self-Assessment Rubric (PDF; 92 KB; 15 pp.) Intensive Academic Support; College-Going Support
Breaking Ranks in the Middle
(Outside Source)

Cornerstone Strategy #4

Implement a comprehensive advisory or other program that ensures each student has frequent and meaningful opportunities to plan and assess with an adult his or her academic, personal, and social development.

Appendix 1: Student Advisory Programs, pp. 273-276.
Turning Points Principle
(Outside Source) 		Organize relationships for learning.
This We Believe (Outside Source)
and
Fundamentals for Student Success in the Middle Grades (Outside Source)

Prepared staff is interested in students and able to work with this age group.

Teaching teams provide structured opportunities for engagement and relationships.

There are multiple avenues for involvement.
Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center
(PDF; Outside Source)

Key issues in middle school

Building relationships among English language arts, ESL, and bilingual teachers is important to support students’ learning (p. 24).

Making Middle Grades Work: All students should be afforded the opportunity to establish close relationships with those responsible for educating them, such as teachers, aides, and other adults (p. 82).
Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center—Report on Middle and High School Comprehensive Reform Models (PDF; Outside Source)

Analyzes middle school reform models

This report provides specific details about research results on key school reform models in the middle and high school levels.

Developed by American Institutes for Research (AIR) for the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center, October 2006.

 

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