Middle Schools Seek Fixes as Scores Lag

Grades 6-8 Are Viewed as a Weak Link

One student in three attending a middle school in Maryland lacks proficiency on the Maryland School Assessment, a standard all students are supposed to meet by 2014.

School boards across the D.C. suburbs are talking about fixing middle schools. There is fairly broad consensus that they represent the weak link between comparatively successful elementary and high schools. There is pervasive talk of middle school reform.

"We're just recognizing now that these children have needs that we have not met," said Linda Ferrell, acting director of middle school instruction and achievement in the Montgomery schools.

The concern is driven partly by lackluster results from the statewide test implemented under the federal education mandate No Child Left Behind.

Only 14 of 124 middle schools in the D.C. suburbs achieved at least 90 percent proficiency in reading and math on the 2006 MSA, according to an analysis of data for grades 6 through 8. The analysis includes schools in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles, Frederick, Howard, Montgomery and St. Mary's counties, as well as a limited number of schools in Prince George's that serve grades 6 through 8. (Many middle schools in that county do not have sixth grade.)

And in only nine schools are at least half of the students performing at the advanced level, the highest of three on the statewide test. Advanced performance roughly translates to above-grade-level work.

MSA scores have soared among elementary schools. Overall proficiency on the MSA tops 75 percent in Maryland's elementary schools. In middle schools, it lags at 65 percent.

Among area schools, proficiency ranges from a high of 95 percent at Clarksville Middle School, a National Blue Ribbon school in Howard County, to a low of 29 percent at William Wirt Middle School in Prince George's, where 75 percent of students receive federal meal subsidies.

Education leaders offer many theories for the comparatively poor performance of middle schools, which frequently produce strikingly lower test scores than the elementary schools that feed into them. There's talk of reforms and innovations that have lifted performance at the front and back ends of the K-12 system but have somehow failed to reach the middle grades. Middle schools tend to have comparatively scattershot bell schedules and few advanced programs compared with elementary and high schools.

Everywhere, talk of reform is afoot.

The Montgomery County school board heard a report on middle school reform Jan. 9 from Superintendent Jerry D. Weast, who spoke of the need to strengthen the "bridge" between elementary and high schools and to extend the performance gains attained in the lower grades. The report calls for many changes across the middle grades, including an effort to identify "accelerated pathways" across the curriculum, and a new internship model for aspiring principals to develop skills specific to grades.

An audit of the county's middle schools, released in 2005, showed lagging achievement among minorities, students learning English and those living in poverty.

The Anne Arundel school system had a summit last fall on middle school "transformation," spurred in part by uninspiring scores on the statewide tests. Several middle schools in the county have failed to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind, and middle school reform is a top priority for Superintendent Kevin Maxwell.

Anne Arundel recently introduced the International Baccalaureate program into three middle schools. Several school systems have implemented or studied the middle school program offered by IB, which is best known for a rigorous college-prep program in high schools, as a way to elevate performance in the middle grades.

Frederick County completed a survey last month of its middle schools and is midway through a reform effort. Among the concerns is that each of the county's 13 middle schools has a different bell schedule and that the county lacks a comprehensive gifted-education program at that level.