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Find more Kappan articles in the Special Middle Schools Section: PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS MIDDLE GRADE SCHOOL STATE POLICY INITIATIVE IN 1990, a year after the release of Turning Points, Carnegie Corporation of New York began the Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative (MGSSPI), a program of grants to states (usually to the state department of education) designed to stimulate statewide changes in the policy and practice of middle-grades education. Designed as a top-down/bottom-up reform strategy, the initiative has the following goals: 1) to promote widespread implementation of the eight principles of reform set out in Turning Points by means of changes in state policies to encourage local schools to adopt promising practices and 2) to stimulate the development of schools serving concentrations of low-income youths that will produce intellectually prepared, healthy young adolescents. The MGSSPI initially provided $60,000 in planning grants to 27 states, which were chosen on the basis of proposals submitted by nearly all the states. Since 1991 the initiative has provided a series of two-year grants ranging from $50,000 to $360,000 to 15 states: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, and Vermont. These Carnegie Corporation grants are matched by equal commitments of resources by the recipients. The Corporation also supports special reform initiatives under the MGSSPI umbrella in Puerto Rico and Los Angeles. Since 1990 the MGSSPI states have enacted changes in a wide range of state policies that affect middle-grades education. Most states have developed or are actively implementing comprehensive middle-grades policy statements that reflect the Turning Points recommendations. Several states have established or accelerated changes in certification requirements for middle-grades teachers or have made it possible to earn a special endorsement as a trained middle-grades teacher. Recently, state projects have been actively involved in developing statewide frameworks for middle-grades curriculum and assessment, incorporating a middle-grades focus into existing frameworks, and evaluating the usefulness of the new frameworks for the reform of classroom practice. Most projects have established strong relationships with health agencies and other state agencies outside the education department in order to expand and coordinate the resources available to schools for comprehensive health programs. At the local level, each state works with a group of schools called systemic change schools that are attempting to implement the Turning Points recommendations to promote higher student achievement. There are now some 230 such schools nationwide, and an average of 50% of the students who attend them receive free or reduced-price lunches because of low family income. To assist the schools' reform efforts, states have established their own infrastructures to support professional and organizational development. For example, states have developed and sponsored weeklong summer institutes on improving curriculum, instruction, and assessment; have organized professional development seminars facilitated by university faculty members; have created information and resource exchange networks that share characteristics of the Association of Illinois Middle Level Schools network (see "The Illinois Middle Grades Network," below); and have developed systems for identifying, training, and deploying expert "coaches" to provide on-site support. In addition to receiving grant funds, states and schools participating in the Middle Grade School State Policy Initiative have been assisted in their efforts by two providers of technical assistance. The Council of Chief State School Officers has provided or brokered on-site consultation and has convened scores of meetings, conferences, and major institutes that deal with aspects of middle-grades policy and practice. The Center for Prevention Research and Training at the University of Illinois and more recently the National Center for Public Education at the University of Rhode Island have worked intensively to develop the capacity in the states and local schools to administer the Middle Grades Self-Study and to use the data generated thereby to drive changes in classroom practice and improvements in student outcomes. -- Anthony W. Jackson, program officer, Carnegie Corporation of New York. THE ILLINOIS MIDDLE GRADES NETWORK IN 1989 the Illinois Middle Grades Network of the Association of Illinois Middle Level Schools (AIMS) was formed in response to teachers' and principals' dissatisfaction with the level of attention afforded middle-level education throughout the state, the lack of specific middle-level preservice teacher education, and the isolation experienced by educators as they implemented middle-level practices. With seed money from a three-year grant from the U.S. Department of Education, this practitioner-initiated and -driven Network (originally called Project Initiative Middle Level) created a comprehensive program for the implementation and dissemination of innovative practices described in such documents as Turning Points. To be accepted into the Network, schools and their respective districts must agree to pursue middle-grades reform to the fullest and to create school-to-school mentoring relationships. The Network began with 12 schools (one did not take part in the assessment) and has expanded to its current level of 97 schools. In 1995 the schools involved in the Illinois State Board of Education's middle-grades project, supported in part by the Carnegie Corporation, became a special subset of the Network. All have high concentrations of low-income students. Each school enters the Network either as a demonstration school or as a partnership school. Schools that have been well-functioning middle-level schools for several years -- determined by student achievement levels, program characteristics, and face-to-face interviews conducted by AIMS officials -- become demonstration schools. These schools pledge to establish meaningful mentoring relationships with selected partnership schools. The demonstration schools are not places that boast about how great they are; rather, they show the way and deliver the message that, through hard work and dedication, the partnership schools can become successful too. Demonstration schools regularly host visits from the staffs of partnership schools, and faculty members in demonstration schools are continually engaged in communication with their colleagues on all aspects of middle-level practice. Staff members in the demonstration schools deepen their own understanding of and commitment to the principles and practices of middle-level education through their role as mentors. The Network has created a system for the intergenerational transformation of middle-grades philosophy, practices, and expected outcomes. Each year a new set of schools enters the Network with high expectations and high levels of commitment to middle-grades reform, while the schools that have finished their first year's membership move into the category of older brother or sister schools whose new challenges focus on further development and maintenance. Participation in the Self-Study helps to keep the schools on track. Partnership schools join the Network because of their potential, commitment, and willingness to implement and maintain innovative practices. These are schools that have not yet made a complete transformation into Turning Points middle schools. Currently, each partnership school pays an initial fee of $2,000 to join the Network and a small annual participation fee that keeps the feeling of ownership of and involvement in the change process strong. The impetus for change within the Network does not rest with any single individual or school and is not totally dependent on the grit and determination of a courageous leader. The Network encourages teachers to help teachers, administrators to help administrators, and schools to help schools. This "web of relationships" is the heart and soul of the Network and has been a powerful change agent. Through the frequent interchanges, partnership schools are simultaneously steeped in concepts of developmentally appropriate education for young adolescents and practical steps toward operationalizing these principles in the classroom. The Network relationships have the capacity to evolve into a statewide culture of colleagues advocating for and acting in the best interests of middle-level reform. In addition to facilitating mentoring relationships, the Network offers numerous opportunities for staff development focusing on specific implementation problems and potential solutions. Network schools are expected to participate in the yearly cycle of professional offerings that include extended institutes, one-day thematic sessions, site visits, workshops, retreats, conferences, and on-site consultations. The specific content of these experiences is determined by the Network members' requests for training. The Middle Grades Self-Study originated with the Illinois Network. It was jointly created and tested through the collaborative efforts of AIMS, the Network schools, and the Center for Prevention Research and Development at the University of Illinois, then directed by Robert Felner. As is true of the other reform initiatives described in this section, the Self-Study enables a quantitative evaluation of the impact of middle-level practices on student outcomes and provides annual feedback to schools on their individual progress. -- Deborah Kasak, executive director of AIMS. IN 1993-94, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation resolved to address the central issues that affect the education of young adolescents in Michigan, particularly those young people whose healthy development and academic success are compromised by poverty. Working with a group of key stakeholders throughout the state, Foundation staff members and consultants constructed a strategic plan for Middle Start, an initiative dedicated to helping schools make themselves more effective learning environments for all students, but especially for those who are at greatest risk of low academic achievement. Begun with an initial appropriation of $3.2 million from the Kellogg Foundation in the 1994-95 school year (later increased by an additional $2.8 million), the Middle Start Initiative had several objectives: 1) to encourage changes in policies, practices, and public awareness at the school, district, and state levels, in order to improve teaching and learning for middle-grades students; 2) to foster schools' collaboration with other community agencies that provide services to vulnerable young people and their families; and 3) to increase and sustain schools' attention to curricular areas that are critical to low-achieving students' academic success in the middle grades and beyond. From its inception, Middle Start has operated out of a central belief that both balances and sharpens its focus:
Employed strategically, data are useful to schools as they plan, implement, and evaluate improvement efforts. Similarly, data undergird and inform efforts to build public awareness of and will to undertake reform, creating an environment in which policy makers and practitioners can improve middle-grades education for all students. Further, Middle Start theorizes, funders' decisions regarding how to invest in school improvement will be enlightened over time by longitudinal data that illustrate the extent to which varied strategic interventions create and sustain school improvement. To garner useful data regarding the attitudes and practices of teachers and administrators and other issues, the Kellogg Foundation was fortunate to find a partner in the University of Illinois Center for Prevention Research and Development (CPRD). CPRD's survey instruments for teachers, administrators, and students gave individual schools a means by which to obtain an analysis of their efforts to meet students' academic and developmental needs. In addition, CPRD's aggregate Michigan data could both inform and engage the interest of the public and policy makers as they strove to support and sustain efforts to improve schools. Having awarded grant funds to the University of Illinois to enable CPRD to conduct a longitudinal study of Michigan schools, the Kellogg Foundation offered every middle-grades school in the state the opportunity to engage in CPRD's self-assessment process. To encourage honest responses, the Foundation called the assessment "a ticket, not a test." In other words, schools were required to participate in the Self-Study if they wished to be part of the Middle Start Initiative; however, each individual school's survey results would remain the confidential property of the school itself. Schools were also informed that the aggregate Michigan results would be made public, as an essential element of a statewide effort to build public awareness and support. To encourage the development of a state organization's capacity to disseminate information about middle-grades education, the Foundation awarded funds to the Michigan League for Human Services (MLHS) to publish CPRD's baseline findings and to conduct a public-awareness campaign in Michigan. We selected another key intermediary, the Academy for Educational Development, to oversee these and other Middle Start Initiative partnerships, as well as the program's technical assistance and evaluation strategies. Through the Middle Start Initiative, the Kellogg Foundation planned to make a variety of types of grants to participating middle-grades schools in high-poverty districts. We reasoned that CPRD's longitudinal cluster analyses of schools at different levels of the Middle Start Initiative would also yield clues as to how varied forms of grantmaking and other services affected outcomes in diverse settings. We saw the Self-Study as an integral part of a mix of strategies designed to encourage and assist schools in their efforts to provide high levels of academic challenge and support for all students. Approximately one-third of Michigan's middle-grades schools volunteered to participate in the Self-Study in 1994-95 and to administer the assessment again in 1996-97. Many found that their individual Self-Study analyses gave them an excellent basis from which to begin valuable discussions of how to transform their schools. Others never grappled with their findings and instead shelved CPRD's carefully wrought data analyses. For those schools interested in applying for Middle Start grants, however, the data were central to their planning. In a state in which schools are judged -- often harshly -- by students' scores on standardized achievement tests, the surveys have given schools a tool with which to assess the resources available to promote achievement. As a result, many more schools now show interest and excitement in gathering data within the school community. Further, some schools have chosen to make public the results of their Self-Study, in order to help their communities understand their needs. At Middle Start grantee meetings, school teams dig deeper into their Self-Study findings, discuss their efforts with other teams, and plan ways to use their 1996-97 analysis to aid them in monitoring progress. Since the first administration of the CPRD instruments in Michigan in the fall of 1994, the Self-Study surveys have generated many encouraging consequences. When MLHS released its statewide report, Starting Again in the Middle, the findings stirred public attention. The report revealed that Michigan's middle-grades students are losing ground in part because their schools are also losing ground, with insufficient human and financial resources to meet students' needs. Within a month of the release of Starting Again in the Middle, many of the state's major newspapers, associations, professional newsletters, legislators, and others had used CPRD data to substantiate their claims about the importance of middle-grades schools and about the need for greater public support. Michigan funders met to consider the implications of the report. Civic and educational organizations showed interest in engaging the public in enlightened, data-driven discussions of middle-grades education. At the national level, the National Association of Secondary School Principals requested copies of an executive summary for its members. Clearly, the data have helped to guide important public conversations about middle-grades education. The data suggest many significant paths for others in the state who are concerned about middle-grades education. For example, Central Michigan University's Michigan Schools in the Middle program considered CPRD's aggregate findings regarding teachers' needs for professional development when planning its continuing education offerings. To catch the wave of support for middle-grades schools, Middle Start's statewide advisory group suggested that the Kellogg Foundation produce a video to illustrate what effective middle-grades education looks like. Once again, CPRD findings were helpful in leading videographers to Michigan schools in which there were abundant examples of effective practices. For the schools themselves, the Self-Study makes an important statement about seriousness of purpose in school improvement. Teachers and administrators now speak of a "movement" for middle-grades improvement -- a movement guided by data and reason rather than by guesswork and emotion. Schools' longitudinal data will help them assess where they are headed in their transformational efforts, as they create environments to support the healthy physical, social, emotional, and intellectual growth of all students. For the Kellogg Foundation, the data will help us assess the effectiveness of the Middle Start Initiative. Ultimately, we hope to know more about what approaches achieve what outcomes and under what conditions. We hope that this data-driven Michigan initiative, coupled with the intensive efforts of other state and local groups to enlist public support, will signal new hope for middle-grades education in the state. -- Leah Meyer Austin, program director, Education, Youth, and Higher Education, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, Mich. ©1997, W. K. Kellogg Foundation. MIDDLE GRADES IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM THE Middle Grades Improvement Program (MGIP) is a Lilly Endowment-supported initiative that began in 1987 in 16 urban school districts in Indiana: Indianapolis and seven of its surrounding townships, Anderson, East Chicago, Evansville, Ft. Wayne, Hammond, Muncie, South Bend, and Terre Haute. MGIP formed one part of a carefully planned set of initiatives to increase educational opportunities for youths in Indiana. These efforts were directed toward some of the poorest, most populous, and most racially diverse public education systems in the state because the Endowment believed that all children in the state should have access to a free and excellent elementary/secondary education that would prepare them for personally enriched and socially useful lives. The Endowment's grants targeted middle-grades schools because many young people in these schools begin to fall desperately behind their classmates academically and decide to mark time until they are old enough to drop out of school. In these years as well, young, able students often fail to form the positive sense of their future that is prerequisite to aspiring to college and careers. Staff members were also concerned that, while the middle grades are a crucial element in our education system, these grades received the smallest percentage of public resources and had the weakest voice in their communities for garnering additional resources. Most of the districts were, at the outset, urban clichés -- their schools for young adolescents marked by low test scores, low morale, and high rates of absenteeism and suspension; staffed by teachers lacking preparation to teach middle-grades students; and organized as junior high schools without identity except as inadequate feeders to high schools. MGIP began with a series of six-month planning grants so that school districts could craft their own improvement plans, concentrating on two or more of the following overlapping areas: 1) school-based self-assessment and institutional reform, 2) the development of instructional leadership, 3) reading improvement, 4) dropout prevention and increased access to postsecondary education, and 5) building public support for school improvement. The school districts were asked to engage teachers, parents, and youth-serving community agencies in their planning. They were encouraged to review guidance functions in the schools. Finally, the Endowment made clear that it would value highly those improvement plans that placed high priority on fostering the creativity of all who were invested in the teaching and learning process, adults and students alike. The Endowment provided consultants to the school districts to improve the planning process itself and to lead to successful implementation strategies. It encouraged travel to other school districts around the country to help teachers and administrators break out of their local insularity. MGIP sought districtwide reform, helping districts rethink and "re-vision" middle-level schools to spur the following changes:
The Endowment used a number of different intervention strategies to help school districts achieve these goals. For instance, after the planning grants, 16 districts received up to $150,000 for three years (MGIP-I) to implement their plans, plus intensive assistance from skilled and knowledgeable consultants. To help schools move beyond changes in school culture and organizational structure to tackle classroom change, the Endowment awarded small grants to groups of teachers, providing an incentive for interdisciplinary teams to create innovative curriculum units. MGIP leaders in the districts reported that they could not focus on both substantially improving the quality of the teaching/learning enterprise and on reaching out beyond the boundaries of the classroom. A second round of implementation grants (MGIP-II) challenged school districts to establish more focused priorities and to concentrate either on improved curriculum and instruction or on parent/community involvement. In addition, the Endowment requested and received assurances that MGIP schools would work to eliminate all threats and practices of corporal punishment, would search for ways to reduce rates of suspension and expulsion, and would honestly reexamine and modify their grouping/tracking policies, especially as they related to poor and minority children. In a final series of districtwide grants, the Endowment funded three of the school districts to participate in MGIP-III, a two-year "have-it-all" effort to focus on classroom change and parent/community involvement and, in addition, to help ease the transitions from elementary school into middle school and from middle school into high school. In addition, individual MGIP schools received recognition grants to honor and extend the impressive strides they had made -- sometimes despite ineffective or inhospitable district contexts -- in transforming themselves into more academically effective and growth-enhancing institutions. Throughout the process, from the invitation to be part of MGIP onward, staff development efforts and every other component of this school change initiative were derived from and driven by a clearly articulated set of values -- equity, excellence, fairness, and developmental responsiveness -- related to the necessity for schools to help young people grow to be caring, contributing members of a diverse democracy. This was not to be a program "about" teaming, common planning time, advisories, block scheduling, or grade configuration as ends in themselves, but about those strategies as means to achieving a social imperative that, if children are to grow up well in America, they must be educated in significantly improved schools. While MGIP focused on districtwide middle-level improvement, the Endowment attempted to strengthen the professional and policy infrastructure supporting school performance by making teacher education improvement grants to three universities, teacher and principal empowerment grants to the Indiana Middle Level Association and the MGIP Network (a self-governing body of key representatives of the 16 school districts), grants to the Education Development Center to design and implement staff development and technical assistance to MGIP districts, and policy analysis and action grants to such entities as the state standards board. Even the most jaded of observers agree that there is little question that many of the MGIP schools "feel" better: they are, for the most part, friendlier, warmer, more relaxed, and more respectful. In the best of them there is an "energetic calm," more collegiality, and more focused attachments between adults and children. There are also parents who sing the praises of the schools (and are now terrified of sending their children to high school). In other words, the schools have established a warmer, more adolescent-centered environment. But many questions remain that only carefully constructed and conducted research can answer. For instance, what changes in practice, specifically, led to these observable climate outcomes? Are they being sustained? More important, what further changes are made possible by having achieved these climate outcomes, which were, after all, but one of the goals of a multimillion-dollar enterprise? Are there direct pathways from a more personalized, respectful school environment to improved academic outcomes? Are different or more intense interventions needed to overcome barriers of race and class? What other strategies might lead to more powerful developmental and achievement results? We have turned to the work of Robert Felner and his colleagues to help answer these and other questions about what works, why, how, in what combinations, and to what extent. Answers to these questions lead to the practice of school-based, data-driven decision making, which is important for several reasons. Good data ought to serve as the underpinning for the planning and reflection that are key to effective school reform. The emphasis on data draws schoolpeople together around reality rather than around guesses, personal projection, and wishful thinking. Finally, this orientation establishes the regularity of an ongoing process that extends from year to year, across the great divide of summer recess and the diversions of rampant "projectitis." In other words, the Self-Study process should help the schools retain their focus on the business at hand. -- Joan Lipsitz, Lilly Endowment Inc., Indianapolis (retired). |
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