Taking Center Stage—Act II

Ensuring Success and Closing the Achievement Gap for California’s Middle Grades Students

The first installment in this series introduced Taking Center Stage—Act II (TCSII): Ensuring Success and Closing the Achievement Gap for California’s Middle Grades Students. TCSII (pronounced T-C-S-2) is an innovative new project for middle grades educators. It is delivered via a powerful Web portal that debuted at the California League of Middle Schools annual conference in Sacramento in February and will be available online, free of charge for California middle grades educators. The California School Boards Association, as a part of the California Middle Grades Alliance, was an important partner in helping to design TCSII and the 12 recommendations that provide the structure for its organization and content.

Ensuring Academic Excellence for All Students

Since the publication of the original Taking Center Stage (2001), middle grades educators have worked hard to help every student prepare for the rigors of high school and the increasingly competitive global economy. Their dedication in implementing standards-based education has resulted in some promising news:

• 57 percent of middle schools had an increased schoolwide Academic Performance Index in 2007
• 24 percent of middle schools scored at or above the performance target of 800 on the API in 2007
• 35 percent of California’s middle schools met all of their API target
• The median middle school scores on the API have risen from 667 (2002 Base) to 730 (2007 Growth)[1]

However, in spite of these promising trends, many results from the most recent statewide testing reveal a lingering—and troubling—achievement gap. For example, as if it is not bad enough that only 43 percent of middle grades students in California scored proficient or above in English/language arts, the numbers were far lower for certain subgroups of students:

• 29 percent of middle grades African-American and Hispanic students reached proficient or above
• 8 percent of English learners reached proficiency or above
• 11 percent of students with disabilities reached proficiency or above[2]

The failure to help large groups of students experience success will have devastating consequences for many of them as individuals, and for our society as a whole. As a result, there is a clear need to focus on Academic Excellence—one of four sections in TCSII that mirrors the organizational structure developed by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform to create high performing middle schools.

Three chapters and their companion videos comprise the section on Academic Excellence. Each TCSII chapter and related video focuses on one of the 12 recommendations and provides easy access to a wide variety of resources that school team members can use to help their students succeed.

Chapter 1—Rigor. The concept of academic rigor plays a central role in effective middle schools. The chapter on Rigor discusses how educators at both the district and school levels support a vision that all students can attain or exceed grade-level standards. It explores how such universal high expectations play out in all aspects of curriculum, instruction, and in the school climate as a whole. The chapter also includes information about developing literacy across the curriculum and on strategies, such as pacing and backward mapping, which help align instruction, materials and assessment to the standards. The chapter concludes with a section on the issue of standards-based reporting and grades.

Chapter 2—Instruction, Assessment and Intervention. The second chapter explores strategies that integrate instruction with continuous progress monitoring and timely, accelerated interventions. It provides a wealth of information and resources about instruction in each of the content areas. In addition, each section of the chapter provides helpful links to the California Department of Education and outside resources. This is a comprehensive chapter that includes over 86 sections on a wide variety of topics, including study skills, differentiation, common benchmark assessments, appropriate test preparation, homework issues, rubrics, summer school, retention options and much more.

Chapter 3—Time. Under the National Forum’s organization, time is not a component of academic excellence. However, the California Department of Education and members of the middle grades partner organizations believe that the effective use of time is a critical element in ensuring academic success. The content of the chapter on Time explores how teaching teams weave instruction, assessment, and interventions into a schedule that is flexible enough to allow students to transition to and from needed interventions without excluding them from exploratory courses or needed social engagement. The chapter also shares strategies about making time for regularly scheduled teacher team meetings to discuss data, school climate, and the intersection of instruction, assessment and interventions.

Each chapter ends with the following appendices related to the recommendation:

• Teaming practices
• Online and print resources
• The Recommendation in ActionThe Chart of Related Initiatives on Middle Grades Reform

The TCSII portal features regular additions of best-practice videos, school vignettes and research, as practitioners share their ideas with the TCSII staff. This dynamic, growing library of best practice ideas is one of the benefits of a dedicated portal for middle grades excellence.

More to come

This article is the second of a five-part series about the content of Taking Center Stage—Act II. This issue covers Part II—Academic Excellence. Part III covers Developmental Responsiveness; Part IV highlights the sections on Social Equity; Part V explores the issues surrounding Organizational Structures and Processes.

Related link:

Enter the Taking Center Stage--Act II (TCSII) Web Portal @ http://pubs.cde.ca.gov/TCSII

[1] “State Superintendent Jack O’Connell Releases 2007 Accountability Progress Report.” Sacramento: California Department of Education, August 31, 2007. http://www.cde.ca.gov/nr/ne/yr07/yr07rel111.asp

[2] Extracted from STAR results http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2007/viewreport.asp