Test Scores Suggest Success In Middle School Instruction

Among the 20 schools with the largest percentages of students scoring advanced in 2007, only three experienced a year-to-year decline in performance.

A wave of change is sweeping the middle grades, prompted by concern that they were not teaching with the same rigor or yielding the same results as elementary or high schools.

The most noticeable change is a dramatic increase in students taking accelerated math classes in the middle years, an initiative that seems to have spread to every school system in the region. Educators view math acceleration as a gateway to advanced study in high school and, in turn, to college. Higher-level math classes have helped middle schools cultivate a community of students similar to those in honors and Advanced Placement high school classes.

At Samuel Ogle Middle School in Bowie, the number of students taking Algebra I, a high-school-level course, has doubled from 60 to 120 in the past two years.

"We're looking at their MSA scores . . . their report cards, their class work, their homework, we're talking to their parents, and then we're placing them in as challenging a class as possible," said Kathleen Brady, the principal.

The share of Samuel Ogle students scoring advanced on the MSA increased from 22 percent in 2006 to 29 percent in 2007. Those rating proficient rose from 69 percent to 78 percent.

At Hoover Middle, only 20 of 345 eighth-grade students will study grade-level math in the fall; everyone else will take advanced classes. The share of students scoring advanced on the statewide test at Hoover rose from 62 percent in 2006 to 71 percent in 2007, the strongest performance of any middle school in the region.

"We are at a student-by-student . . . basis of who we think we can move" into accelerated study, said Billie-Jean Bensen, the principal.

Another initiative that has boosted performance in elementary and middle schools is the increasing use of data to evaluate students on specific skills, such as geometry, probability and reading comprehension.

Kingsview Middle School in Germantown hosts frequent "data chats" involving teachers, students and parents to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of individual students, with a particular focus on children who are on the cusp of moving from one performance level to the next on the MSA.

"We identify specific children, those who are not doing well, those who are doing better, those who are capable of much more," said Dennis Queen, the principal.

In St. Mary's, school officials conduct oral reading assessments of all students who score below proficient on the statewide test and place them in tightly focused remedial programs. Last year, the county introduced the sixth grade to a block of reading instruction called Literacy Lab, with students divided into small groups according to reading level and assigned work appropriate to their skills.

Elizabeth Cooper, the school system's supervisor of reading instruction, credits the approach with generating double-digit growth in sixth-grade reading scores for students in special education and from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, gains "that we couldn't explain in any other way."