Middle schools in Anne Arundel County would go from four classes per day to six shorter ones next year under a new plan set forth by Superintendent Kevin Maxwell.
The plan is part of an effort to improve academic performance in middle schools, a transition period between elementary and high schools when students’ grades often fall. The proposed change comes after two years of work by a county Middle School Task Force, which included various members of the schools and community, and on the heels of a state Middle School Steering Committee report that made 16 recommendations to improve middle schools.
“We really wanted the schedule to match development needs,” Maxwell said. “We allowed some variability and flexibility in what students take and we allowed for the transition to high school.”
While the superintendent can change class schedules without school board approval, the change requires more teachers, at a cost of $7.4 million, and the board must OK that in next year’s budget. The board is set to discuss the change this week.
Under the new schedule, students each day would take all four core classes — language arts, math, science and social studies — and two electives — such as foreign language or music.
The change would not, however, make the school day longer. Class lengths would shrink from 86 minutes to 58 minutes.
Anne Arundel is the first school district in the Baltimore area to try to put in place some recommendations from the state steering committee. The new schedule will push more students in sixth grade to take foreign language courses, provide more technology in elective classes and create more time for teachers’ professional development and instructional planning, officials said.
Middle schools started popping up in the United States in about 1980, but officials are now reforming them. In districts such as Baltimore City, the transition from middle to high school is being bypassed with the creation of more sixth- through 12th-grade schools and kindergarten through eighth-grade schools.
“It really is beginning to be the focus of attention again,” said Deborah Kasak, executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform. “We’ve been focusing on high school graduation, but what their stuff says to us is if you don’t keep them on the track to success in sixth, seventh and eighth grade, they’re not going to get to that graduation.”
Middle-school students’ scores steadily decreased on the 2008 Maryland School Assessment. Fourth-grade students tested the highest on both math and reading portions of test, which is given to third- through eighth-graders to measure progress on the No Child Left Behind law.
Nearly 89 percent of fourth-graders tested proficient on math and reading, but only 62 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in math, 73 percent in reading. No Child Left Behind requires all to be proficient by 2014.
“There’s no magic solution for middle schools,” said Bob Mosier, spokesman for Anne Arundel schools. “If there was, someone would have thought of it by now and put it in.”
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