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School administrators are focused on increasing
the rigor and quality of teaching at middle schools.
Are the students ready?
By Julie Rasicot
When Principal Daniel Vogelman walks the hallways of
Westland Middle School in Bethesda, he sees some students
who look like they still belong in elementary school.
Other students probably could use a shave.
“We have students who have not hit, or are at the very
beginning stages of, maturity, and we have students
very deeply in maturation,” Vogelman says. “It’s a physical
difference. You walk down the hallway and see very short,
young-looking children, and you see very old-looking
children taller than I am.”
But the differences aren’t all visible. During middle
school years, students are undergoing the greatest mental
and emotional changes they’ve experienced since birth,
Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) officials say.
Because of those physiological changes, middle school
traditionally has been viewed as the three-year period
during which county schools focus on getting students
through a difficult time, rather than pushing them academically.
That view is changing. “As a parent, I felt we focused
too much on making kids feel good and not setting the
stage for the next step in high school,” says MCPS Board
of Education member Patricia O’Neill of Bethesda. “I
felt there was a big void.”
In recent years, MCPS has focused on improving academics
at elementary schools. Students are arriving in middle
school with math and reading skills at higher levels
than ever, but middle schools have found they aren’t
up to teaching the advanced students. “In the past,
what we had seen on performance was that kids on an
upward trajectory [after elementary school] were stalling
in middle school,” says school board Vice President
Shirley Brandman of Bethesda.
Student performance on standardized tests remains stagnant,
declines or students make very minor gains (depending
on the school) from elementary to middle school, Maryland
School Assessments show. For example, at North Bethesda
Middle School last school year, nearly 97 percent of
incoming sixth-graders—the product of reform efforts
at elementary schools—scored proficient or above on
the math portion of the MSA. Meanwhile, only 84 percent
of eighth-graders heading to high school scored proficient
or above in math. MCPS officials have embarked
on a comprehensive, three-year, $10 million effort to
improve the quality of teaching and student performance
in the county’s 38 middle schools. More than 160 educators,
parents and community members studied the problem, finding
a number of issues that need to be addressed, including:
- Inconsistencies in the way courses are taught from
school to school.
- Inconsistent course offerings. For example, some
schools have honors level courses in certain subjects,
while other schools don’t.
- The fact that only 50 percent of middle school teachers
are certified in the subjects they teach.
The review also found a lack of services for underprivileged
and special education students and for students for
whom English is a second language. Several years in
the making, the middle school reform plan centers on
providing challenging course work to all students, improving
middle school leadership, making sure teachers are experts
in their subjects, changing school schedules for maximum
teaching and learning, providing more programs outside
of school hours to motivate students, and getting parents
more involved.
“We were for nine years very focused on elementary
school,” says Kate Harrison, MCPS acting director for
public information. “Now we are very focused on middle
school.”
Academic rigor
At the top of the reform list is a requirement that
middle schools provide rigor across the curriculum to
all students, regardless of their academic level or
racial or ethnic background. A lack of rigor, especially
in science (no mainstream middle school offers honors
courses in science), is a common complaint from parents.
“We have been talking about rigor for a long time,
and what it looks like,” says Gail Samuels, a special
education teacher and eighth-grade team leader at North
Bethesda Middle School. “Rigor can be in any classroom.
It’s not about the level of work; it’s more about how
engaging the work is. Enriching conversations should
occur at any level.”
“When parents say rigor, what they’re really saying
is, ‘Is my child being engaged?’” adds Jeffrey Rhodes,
principal of Sligo Middle School in Silver Spring.
MCPS Superintendent Jerry D. Weast likes to remind
educators that they only have 540 days with middle school
students before the students head off to high school.
Some teachers say the time seems shorter because sixth-graders
spend much of their year adjusting to middle school,
and because eighth-graders are ready to move on.
Educators say they need to maintain a balance between
pushing students and being mindful of what they can
handle emotionally.
“As we talk about rigor, we need to remember that middle
school students are not just mini-high school students,”
school board member O’Neill says.
A school’s demographics can define how it approaches
rigor. At high-achieving schools with small minority
and low-income populations, such as Thomas W. Pyle Middle
School in Bethesda and Herbert Hoover Middle School
in Potomac, balancing the pressure to accelerate students
can be tricky, officials say.
“How much do you push? Because many students are ready,
but they’re still little kids,” says Hoover Principal
Billie-Jean Bensen. At Hoover, nearly 87 percent of
eighth-graders completed algebra or a higher math in
the 2006-2007 school year, one of the highest completion
rates in the county, according to MCPS statistics. Bensen
says her job is to provide the most rigorous program
possible. It’s up to parents, she says, to decide what
is right for their kids.
Pyle Principal Michael Zarchin says educators must
focus on meeting the needs of individual students. Take
math classes, for example. Although many students enter
Pyle with higher-level math skills, students who relocate
to the school may be at different levels. “We have some
students come in to math and they are really struggling,
depending on the rigor that’s taught,” Zarchin says.
Different challenges
At schools with more racial, ethnic and economic diversity,
such as Westland, Sligo and Newport Mill Middle School
in Kensington, increasing rigor creates different challenges.
The issue of rigor was “a very real concern” at Westland
when Vogelman became principal two years ago. He invited
parents in to discuss their concerns with staff and
“then we went to work” helping teachers make classes
more challenging for all students.
Vogelman reallocated his staff to reduce class sizes
in certain subjects. For example, he created double-period
reading classes of 15 students each for seventh- and
eighth-graders who needed extra help, and smaller classes
for students taking grade-level math. “I use my staffing
to keep class sizes down to provide support for those
students,” he says.
At Sligo Middle School, students range from those who
qualify to attend a magnet school to those who haven’t
had much formal education, Rhodes says. “The challenge
for my staff is how to meet those kids where they are
and challenge them to go further.”
At Newport Mill Middle School, students are assigned
to “color zones” to help them monitor their own progress
and encourage them to tackle challenging schoolwork.
Students begin a class in one color zone—either yellow
or red depending on their ability—and work toward the
green zone, the top level of achievement. “We always
aim for the green zone. They know what zone they’re
working on and what they need to do,” says Principal
Nelson McLeod.
At Newport Mill, 80 percent of students are minority
and more than 50 percent qualify for free or reduced-price
meals. “We believe in letting kids know where they are,
and then they know how to plan where they want to be.”
MCPS’s goal is to have 80 percent of eighth-graders
completing algebra or higher math by 2010. As with the
reading initiative in the elementary grades, school
officials say that success in algebra is critical for
students to be able to move on to more advanced high
school mathematics and science classes.
In the 2006-07 school year, nearly 56 percent of county
eighth-graders completed Algebra I or higher. That was
an increase of 13 percentage points from the 2000-01
school year, according to the MCPS Department of Reporting
and Regulatory Accountability.
McLeod says his school has already taken steps to prepare
students in math, including daily 90-minute math classes.
“We have proven our results,” he says, noting that 74
percent of this year’s eighth-graders are taking algebra
or higher math.
Too much rigor?
Some parents and educators question, however, whether
students are being pushed too hard, too fast.
Pyle parent Marcie Berger says she’s dismayed, rather
than impressed. “The push in math, in my view, is not
healthy. There are other areas, like science, that need
more rigor,” says Berger, whose daughter, Sasha, is
an eighth-grader. “There’s a lack of balance. Math has
been hyperfocused on.”
Kathy Knox of Bethesda, co-president of the PTSA at
Pyle, says her children’s workload is “very heavy,”
but she’s thrilled with the teachers at Pyle and sees
“a real effort to push kids to do their best.”
“As a parent, I applaud the effort, but my kids can
do it and they are,” says Knox, whose 12-year-old son,
Liam, is in the seventh grade and taking algebra. Her
older son, Ted, 14, is a freshman at Walt Whitman High
School.
Knox says she knows that some parents wonder whether
their children will pay a price in the future for the
push to accelerate now. “What happens in later years?
Do they just drop math because they hate it?” she says.
Educators have their own concerns. “That success means
nothing if it comes at the cost of being burned out
in high school,” says Zarchin, Pyle’s principal.
Educators say they make sure parents who request advanced
classes for their children understand the possible costs
to the students, especially if school work and test
scores show that a student may not be ready for more
difficult work. But, the educators say, it’s ultimately
the parents’ decision.
For Westland eighth-grader Jackson Trott, schoolwork
is “academically challenging, but not undoable.” Having
completed algebra in seventh grade, Jackson is tackling
geometry this year, a course that is “really, really
hard because you have to memorize so much,” he says.
Although Jackson sometimes wishes he had waited until
he was older to take geometry, traditionally a high
school course, he says he knows “it’s really important”
to take the class now. Still, he gets a little stressed
by the pressure to succeed. “My geometry teacher keeps
talking about the SATs. It’s creepy,” he says.
Emotional adolescents
Improving the way middle schoolers are taught presents
its own challenges because of the physiological changes
adolescents experience.
The adolescent brain is unique. The part of the brain
that governs abstract thinking and impulse control has
a huge growth spurt in middle school, while the section
that controls emotions is fully developed and strong,
says Linda Ferrell, MCPS director of middle school instruction.
“Due to a lot of reasons, adolescents regard everything
emotionally,” says Rhodes, Sligo’s principal. “Everything
is of an utmost importance, and everything is focused
on them.”
Themis Johnson, a staff development teacher at Westland,
says teachers need to recognize that middle school students
no longer will respond to the elementary school model
in which the teacher is the sole authority. “You have
to talk to them differently. You have to approach them
differently. There’s this dictatorial role you play
with younger children,” and middle schoolers won’t stand
for it, she says. “They just balk.”
That’s why educators agree that building relationships
among students and staff is a key ingredient to success.
Though this idea may not be new, educators were reminded
of the importance of such relationships during a summer
training program that included an exercise in which
they were asked to recall what it felt like to be in
middle school.
Middle school students “really need to know that you
care about them,” says Miranda Reed, a sixth-grade science
teacher at North Bethesda Middle School who has been
teaching for 12 years. “If they don’t think you care
or that you are not invested in them as individuals,
then they really have no desire to be successful in
your class.”
Building relationships may involve efforts as simple
as learning how to pronounce students’ names and being
familiar with what’s important to today’s middle schoolers,
things even veteran teachers need to be reminded of,
Vogelman says. “You should know what an iPod is and
you should know what Facebook is,” he says.
Westland’s Johnson wants teachers to connect with students
outside the classroom, as well. When students are asked,
“‘What makes this teacher special for you?’ nine out
of 10 times the student says, ‘That teacher reached
out to me,’” Johnson says. “A lot more of that is needed
at the middle school level than the elementary school
level. You have to make that connection.”
For Westland eighth-grader Austin Cheney, 13, the Sunday
night recorded calls that Vogelman makes to students
with news about the upcoming school week help make such
a connection. “It shows he’s really into the kids,”
she says.
Student-centered teaching
Educators say they’re moving toward more student-centered
teaching, in which the teacher acts as a facilitator
for students working in groups. Desks are arranged in
circles or groups, rather than in rows, so students
can work together. Instead of leading the class, teachers
may introduce a lesson and help students as they work
on an activity.
The strategy taps into the belief that middle schoolers
are heavily influenced by their peers, thus more interested
in learning from each other than from a teacher standing
in front of a blackboard. “The way they say who they
are is [by] who they’re with,” notes Erika Huck, resource
counselor at Pyle.
Part of increasing rigor is increasing student participation.
That may be as simple as a teacher writing students’
names on wooden tongue depressors and choosing a stick
when it’s time to call on them, educators say.
Such strategies can help involve students who are concerned
about their appearance or are so lacking in self-confidence
that they want to fade into the background, educators
say. “Kids know these teachers are expecting them to
be prepared, to be ready,” says Alton Sumner, North
Bethesda’s principal.
Westland’s Vogelman says he tells teachers he wants
them to “make sure you’re giving everyone the opportunity
to participate, even if they don’t want to.”
More qualified staff
A major goal of the reform effort is for middle school
teachers and staff to have the knowledge, skills and
content expertise necessary to teach students. Under
the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools are required
to ensure that current teachers and new hires are considered
“highly qualified,” meaning they’ve earned at least
a bachelor’s degree, full state certification or licensure
and can prove they know the subject they teach.
Although 73 percent of county middle school teachers
meet that standard, about 50 percent “are certified
in elementary education without specific expertise in
a single field,” according to the middle school reform
report.
The reform calls for the district to create a professional
development plan with new job descriptions for middle
school teachers, requiring teachers to be knowledgeable
in their content area and in adolescent child development.
Finding staff suited to the middle school environment
is equally as important as hiring teachers who are experts
in their subjects, middle school administrators say.
At Sligo, where nearly 83 percent of classes were taught
by highly qualified teachers last school year, Principal
Rhodes has been grappling with finding the right person
to fill a science teacher position. “Having people who
look highly qualified on paper is not a problem,” he
says. “Having people prepared to teach middle school,
in actuality, is a challenge.”
Vogelman says the requirement to hire highly qualified
teachers is “not going to change, necessarily, how I
hire people.” When hiring, he looks primarily for teachers
who show that they can relate to students, and then
considers their content expertise. “If you can’t get
a child to listen to you because you don’t have the
personality, then what good are your four or five degrees?”
he says. Julie Rasicot is a Silver Spring
freelance writer who also writes for The Washington
Post and other publications.
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