They graduated from elementary school relatively unscathed, thanks to the healing powers of the cootie shot. But it’s middle school where kids contend with overwhelming emotional, neurological, physical and cognitive changes — and national and local leaders say the middle child of K-12 education has been long overlooked in school reforms.
Since returning to session, the D.C. Council has been examining the District’s public middle schools, which tend to be underenrolled, inconsistent in their academic and after-school offerings, and complicit in a high dropout rate among ninth-graders. Perhaps most startling, 10 percent of eighth-graders said they had attempted suicide, according to a report from the Office of the State Superintendent for Education.
| Chatting about the schools | ||||
| D.C. parents who want to join the conversation about the city’s public schools — or any other school issue — can attend a number of community meetings beginning Monday. Dubbed “Engaging Families in a New Path Forward,” the 6 to 8 p.m. sit-downs are divided by ward: | ||||
| Date | Ward | Location | ||
| Oct. 24 | Ward 8 | Ketcham Elementary, 1919 15th St. SE | ||
| Oct. 26 | Ward 7 | Shadd, 5601 East Capitol St. SE | ||
| Oct. 27 | Wards 1 & 4 | Tubman Elementary, 3101 13th St. NW | ||
| Nov. 10 | Wards 5 & 6 | Ludlow-Taylor Elementary, 659 G St. NE | ||
| Nov. 14 | Wards 2 & 3 | Eaton Elementary, 3301 Lowell St. NW | ||
Many Fairfax County middle schools are breaking their teachers into teams to focus on students more individually, while Montgomery County trained teachers to actively address the special needs of preteens and early adolescents until funding for its Middle School Reform Initiative ran out.
“Most policy and laws say ‘elementary’ and ‘secondary’ — there’s no language in it that says ‘middle,'” said April Tibbles, spokeswoman for the Association for Middle Level Education. “When states and districts have to make decisions, well, it isn’t really done very well right now.”
But children in sixth through eighth grades tend to need more attention than their elementary and high-school counterparts. “Young people between the ages of 10 and 15 go through more rapid and profound changes than during any period in their life except from birth to age 2,” Tibbles said. “Educators need to be prepared for how to work with this age group.”
Fairfax County Public Schools holds “open enrollment” for high-school math and foreign languages, allowing any middle-school student to a get a leg up on advanced coursework to ease the transition into high school. To tackle the haywire emotions of the age, many Fairfax middle schools break students into “teams,” comprised of a math, science, English and social-studies instructor, to focus better on students’ individual needs, said Noel Klimenko, coordinator for secondary instruction and school support.
“It provides a support system instead of a more high-school situation where unconnected teachers are interacting with the child,” she said. “Middle-school kids have a lot of things going on ?– their hormones and things like that — but if we can figure out what’s going to motivate them to learn, then they can be successful, and that’s true of kids at every age.”
An audit of Montgomery County’s public middle schools in the 2004-2005 school year “really confirmed what the school system knew: There were some inconsistencies with the implementation of the curriculum, there were resources that were not provided to all children, and there was a need for middle-school achievement to increase,” said Linda Caroll, acting director of middle-school instruction for MCPS.
School officials created the Middle School Reform Initiative, revising curricula and introducing special electives like robotics. They also emphasized inquiry-based teaching and alternative ways to demonstrate learning than, say, a book report.
As the budget tightened, however, MCPS eliminated a number of staff positions associated with the reform. The last school year that the initiative was in full force was 2008-2009.
“I wouldn’t say it’s resolved because we have quite a number of schools that did not make [adequate yearly progress],” a federal benchmark for improvement, Caroll said. “But if you look at the progress we’ve made, it’s phenomenal.”
Of the 31 schools Maryland flagged as “schools identified for improvement,” the lion’s share — 15 — were middle schools. But on state exams, eighth-grade students did just as well as high-schoolers.
In the District, the issue is more pressing. Just 59 percent of ninth-graders are promoted to the 10th grade and 53 percent of students who drop out of high school do so in the ninth grade.
“I blame adults,” said Brown, when asked why middle schools were just now becoming a focus of city officials. But, he said, “What we do with our middle schools will determine if we are successful in school reforms.”
