Middle Level Reform

“The middle grades will play a pivotal role in enabling the nation to reach President Obama’s goal of graduating all students from high school prepared for college or advanced career training.In high poverty neighborhoods, in particular, our research and school improvement work indicate that students’ middle grades experiences have tremendous impact on the extent to which they will close achievement gaps, graduate from high school, and be prepared for college.”

Putting Middle Grade Students on the Graduation Path (Balfanz, 2009)

Far too many of our middle grade students are being left behind. Consider some statistics on the current state of our middle grade education:

• Only 11% of 8th grade students are on track to succeed in first-year college English, algebra, biology, and social science courses;
• Less than 10% of 6th grade students who do not attend school regularly, who receive poor behavior marks, or who fail math or English graduate high school on time;
• 22% of all middle schools are likely to be identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring versus only 13% of elementary schools;
• 50 % of our eighth graders are reading at “below basic” levels in many of our urban school districts.

According to ACT (The Forgotten Middle, 12/09), the level of academic achievement that students attain by eighth grade has a larger impact on the students’ college and career readiness than anything that happens academically in high school. If we do not address this problem from the Federal level we will never have a chance to solve the nation’s dropout crisis.

NASSP urges all middle level leaders to advocate at the local, state and national level on behalf of young adolescents. To contact your representative visit the Principal’s Legislative Action Center (PLAC). To stay current on pending legislation and other federal issues impacting education refer to the Principal’s Policy Blog. NASSP also has recommendations for Middle Level Reform, which can be found here. For information on research at the middle level, check out Middle Level Research.