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 in 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, $10million 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 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 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 school work. 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.
