Schools to Watch
Academic Excellence: High-performing schools with middle grades are academically excellent. They challenge all students to use their minds well.
• All students are expected to meet high academic standards. Teachers supply students with exemplars of high quality work that meet the performance standard. Students revise their work based on feedback until they meet or exceed the performance standards.
• Curriculum, instruction, and assessment are aligned with high standards. They provide a coherent vision for what students should know and be able to do. The curriculum is rigorous and non-repetitive; it moves forward substantially as students progress through the middle grades.
• The curriculum emphasizes the understanding of important concepts, development of essential skills, and the ability to apply what one has learned to real-world problems. By making connections across the disciplines, the curriculum helps reinforce important concepts.
• Instructional strategies include a variety of challenging and engaging activities that are clearly related to the concepts and skills being taught.
• Teachers use a variety of methods to assess student performance (e.g., exhibitions, projects, performance tasks) and maintain a collection of student work. Students learn how to assess their own and others’ work against the performance standards.• The school provides students time to meet rigorous academic standards. Flexible scheduling enables students to engage in extended projects, hands-on experiences, and inquiry-based learning. Most class time is devoted to learning and applying knowledge or skills rather than classroom management and discipline.
• Students have the supports they need to meet rigorous academic standards. They have multiple opportunities to succeed and extra help as needed.
• The adults in the school have opportunities to plan, select, and engage in professional development aligned with nationally recognized standards, They have regular opportunities to work with their colleague to deepen their knowledge and improve their practice. They collaborate in making decisions about rigorous curriculum an effective instructional methods. They discuss student work as a means of enhancing their own practice.
