Introduction
At a ground-breaking summit in November 2007, State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jack O’Connell, challenged all California educators to close the racial and economic achievement gap. A year earlier, O’Connell announced the 12 recommendations from Taking Center Stage—Act II: Ensuring Success and Closing the Achievement Gap for All of California’s Middle Grades Students, and said that middle grades improvement would be a focus for his second term in office. “Middle grades can be a time when students become discouraged and give up, or the middle grades can become a springboard to lifelong learning,” said O’Connell. “These children experience swift physical, mental, and emotional changes that alter every aspect of their lives. The depth and breadth of this transformation require us to create the appropriate learning conditions and deliver a rigorous and relevant education that meets the needs of these young people.”
Taking Center Stage—Act II
Taking Center Stage—Act II is an innovative project developed by the Middle and High School Improvement Office (MHSHIO) of the California Department of Education (CDE). The project is dedicated to excellence in middle grades education and is:
- Developed to help educators close the achievement gap and ensure the success of all students
- Designed to provide easy access to hyperlinked, research-based content; vignettes of school practices; connections to middle grades organizations; and helpful resources
- Delivered through a dynamic Web portal
The purpose of Taking Center Stage—Act II (TCSII) is to share what middle grades experts, researchers, advocates, and practitioners know about the best ways to address the critical academic and developmental needs of middle grades students. TCSII shares current information about best practices to address those needs in a dynamic format and encourages educators to collaborate and find solutions to ensure success and close the achievement gap for all of California’s middle grades students.
TCSII builds on the lessons learned during the evolution of middle grades philosophy and through the early stages of standards-based education. (See “Historical Perspective: Setting the Stage for California’s Middle School Reform Movement" from the original Taking Center Stage for a more detailed history of standards-based education in California’s middle grades.) It includes linear discussions (as in a traditional book) and “deep discussion” Web links that provide more information. The TCSII Web portal links to research, online chapters, and vignettes of promising school practices and strategies. In addition, TCSII includes links to school artifacts, including sample letters and examples of school schedules.
The components of TCSII demonstrate that academic success occurs when caring adults are responsive to the needs of developing adolescents, hold high expectations for student learning, and work as a professional learning community to deliver a coherent system of instruction, assessment, and intervention.
The Taking Center Stage—Act II Web portal is like live theatre. The online offerings will expand and change to reflect new laws, research findings, and school practices. The Video Library will periodically feature new vignettes that spotlight effective practices in California’s middle grades communities. Similarly, the “Online and Print Resources” section in each chapter link to research, helpful resources, and school practices. The “Related Links” section will expand as teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents contribute ideas and programs that have helped to close the achievement gap. The Taking Center Stage—Act II Web portal will also be a source of professional development opportunities and presentations for middle grades educators.
In his 2005 bestseller, The World Is Flat, journalist Thomas Friedman explained how a worldwide community of creative people revolutionized communication by collaborating to expand Web-based technologies.1 Using that model, the California Department of Education (CDE) partnered with members of the middle grades education community to create a “one-stop-shop” for middle grades educators. Middle grades stakeholders (including educators, policymakers, and parents) can continually obtain and share resources and ideas through the innovative and dynamic TCSII Web portal. This collaboration will help to realize the vision that all middle grades students can achieve high standards and can become lifelong learners and contributing members of society.
Through the TCSII Web portal, middle grades stakeholders will have access to a growing repository of strategies designed to ensure students’ success. These strategies are illustrated in the Taking Center Stage—Act II recommendations.
Twelve Recommendations for Middle Grades Success
The 12 TCSII recommendations reflect new research about promising middle grades practice and strategies employed by effective middle grades educators. The recommendations are a revision of the original Taking Center Stage recommendations. Each chapter and related video of Taking Center Stage—Act II expands on one of the revised recommendations. None of the strategies alone that are highlighted in the online chapters or videos are sufficient to ensure success. Likewise, there is no “one size fits all” plan that schools can copy to achieve success. Instead, the recommended strategies are an integral part of a comprehensive school vision and culture based on a belief that all young adolescents can achieve and on a commitment to doing “whatever it takes” to make that happen.2
The TCSII recommendations address emerging national priorities for the middle grades. For example, in 2005, the Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center at the American Institutes for Research listed the following key issues facing middle and high schools:3
- Transition from elementary to middle school
- Literacy and reading
- English learners
- Violence and bullying
- Alcohol, tobacco, and other drug prevention
- Parental involvement
- Transition from middle to high school
In addition, both the National Association of Secondary School Principals and the Council of Chief State School Officers have identified middle schools as a focus for reform initiatives.
Each of the 12 recommendations falls under one of the four National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform’s organizing components:
- Academic excellence (rigor; instruction, assessment, and interventions; and time)
- Developmental responsiveness (relevance; relationships; and transitions)
- Social equity (access; and safety, resilience, and health), and
- Organizational support (leadership; professional learning; accountability; and partnerships).
The TCSII project builds on the foundation of the original Taking Center Stage, but it adds the flexibility of an online resource. Although there are 12 “chapters” that discuss each of the TCSII recommendations in detail, the chapters are not linear as in a traditional book. Instead, viewers can link from one subject to a related one in a different chapter or can link outside the TCSII portal to original research or middle grades organizations. In addition, educators can read a section and then view a related TCSII video vignette that illustrates a promising practice in action.
View the Taking Center Stage—Act II Recommendations.
What is next?
With its launch in February 2008, Taking Center Stage—Act II is just beginning. The middle grades educators who planned and developed TCSII developed a “Share Your Ideas” button on the portal so that the project can continue to add new videos and vignettes about effective practices and research studies as practitioners join the TCSII team.
To introduce TCSII to professional learning communities, county offices of education are partnering with CDE to train district and school leadership (DASL) teams on how TCSII can help them engage middle grades students as successful learners. The “Road Show” contains four professional development modules is designed to help educators in the first phase of learning to use the TCSII resources as tools for closing the achievement gap in California’s middle grades.
In the future, TCSII will continue to add professional development modules to help middle grades educators use the TCSII project resources in team meetings, professional development, and individual reflection to ensure that all middle grades students become engaged and successful learners. Specifically, TCSII resources will help educators gain information that will strengthen their practice by allowing them to:
- Access research on effective middle grades practices.
- Reflect on vignettes about effective school practices.
- Analyze individual, team, school, and district practices in light of research and information on effective practice.
Project developers also envision adding features such as classes for professional credit, links to middle grades dialogues, Web conferences, and other middle grades support designed by and for the dedicated middle grades educators who help prepare students for successful futures.
Footnotes
1 Thomas L. Friedman, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005.
2 Whatever It Takes: How Professional Learning Communities Respond When Kids Don't Learn. Edited by Rebecca DuFour, Robert Eaker, Gayle Karhanek, and Richard Dufour. Bloomington, Ind.: National Educational Service, 2004.
3 Works in Progress: A Report on Middle and High School Improvement Programs (PDF; Outside Source). Washington D.C.: The Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center, American Institutes of Research, January 2005, p. 5.