Why do middle schoolers falter on MSAs? | Maryland Gazette (HometownGlenBurnie.com)

It was reflected in the state test scores released last week: They do well in elementary school, but scores drop off when they hit middle school.

Rivers of ink have been spilled into that achievement gap. Experts offer a slew of explanations: Schools don't prepare students for the upper grades; middle school is viewed as a holding pen between elementary and high school; adolescence is a difficult time for students.

While reports - the most recent one released by the state Department of Education two weeks ago - offer solutions, the real, sweeping reform that many are waiting for still hasn't happened.

Locally, Anne Arundel parents have spent a year and a half waiting to see the changes suggested in a 2007 school system task force on middle schools.

Some of those recommendations, like adding more technology to middle schools, are being done quietly; others, like changing the middle school schedule, haven't happened at all. State and county school officials say the reports aren't sitting on a shelf.

They promise better middle schools are coming.

County middle schools did see improvements this year on the Maryland School Assessment, the state's test for students in third through eighth grade.

For example, 83.6 percent of this year's seventh-graders passed the reading test compared with 74.6 percent last year. On math, 78.9 percent passed this year compared with 71.5 percent last year.

But the middle schools still are performing well below elementary schools.

Individual middle schools also netted some of the lowest scores in the school system. For example, aside from the special education schools, Annapolis Middle School's eighth-graders had the single lowest pass rate: 49.4 percent in math. Corkran Middle School's eighth grade followed closely with a 50 percent pass rate in math.

The pattern even holds across grades.

Scores for students who left elementary school last summer fell when they reached middle school. In 2007, at the end of fifth grade, 84 percent of them passed the reading test and 87 percent passed in math. This year, in sixth grade, 83.2 percent passed in reading and 82 percent passed in math.

The age

Mildred Beall, principal of Central Middle School in Edgewater, said much of the problem is hormonal. Children go through an enormous physical and emotional transition during adolescence, and that makes schoolwork more difficult.

"The middle school child is doing a lot of things - experimenting with relationships, their identity," she said. "They make a lot of mistakes, they feel bad about them. There's so much learning, there's social changes, there's physical changes."

The middle school achievement gap, she said, "is a pretty hot-button thing that everyone's looking at."

Moving to a new, bigger school with rotating class periods just at that difficult time doesn't help. Elementary schools are small, close-knit environments, but in middle school students don't get that kind of attention. And often, the attention they get at home also dissipates, as parents begin to see their children as older and more self-sufficient.

"They're still in need of conversation at home and guidance as strong as in elementary school," said Stacey Kopnitsky, executive director of the

Maryland Middle School Association. "They look like young men and women, but at any time they could jump up and down and want stuffed animals."

Another problem is the schoolwork itself. Elementary students are tested mostly on rote memorization, while in middle school they're asked to engage in higher-level thinking. Not all students make that jump in time for the test.

Sage Snider, who advocated for middle school reform last year as the student member of the county Board of Education, said a big factor is the middle school schedule. Classes are in 86-minute blocks and emphasize MSA subjects - language arts and math - without much room for electives. It sends the wrong message, she said.

"It was a reflection of the school system's attitude toward middle school education," she said. "The schedule tells you all that matters is test scores. If you take art and music classes, that tells you school is supposed to be exciting."

Middle school is where students decide whether school is important enough to work hard, or school is stupid and there's no point in trying, she said. The stakes are high: If they don't do well in middle school, they're less likely to stay through high school.

The solution

The state Department of Education calls it "the critical middle" - those years when students are either prepared for a rigorous high school education, or lost.

The state's middle school task force suggested training teachers specifically for middle school, adding instructional time by lengthening the middle school day and year, and teaching students in the fine arts, technology and problem-solving.

Sound familiar? Similar suggestions came out of a local middle school task force in spring 2007. But parents hoping the report would lead to major reform were disappointed when change was slow to come.

"I felt there were a lot of good ideas that came out of it," said Janice Keating, a Severna Park parent who served on the task force. "I was sorry to see not many of them were implemented for the next school year."

Earlier this year, for example, Superintendent Kevin M. Maxwell's decision to delay changing the middle school schedule ignited anger in the countywide Citizen Advisory Committee, the parent group that advises the county Board of Education. The group wanted the complicated schedule with its long, rotating periods changed to a simpler seven-period day. School officials said the change would be expensive, and they weren't sure it would help students.

The task force's report was titled "Phase 1," and promised a that "detailed action plan, timeline and budget will be developed collaboratively by staff to implement the recommendations during Phase 2." That second report never appeared.

But some of those reforms are being made, school officials said.

For example, said school system spokesman Bob Mosier, next year all middle schools will have an advisory period - time set aside during the day for students to learn extra skills or talk about their problems. That will develop relationships between students and teachers and a more personal school environment, he said.

Some schools are getting more technology like interactive white boards, which in part fills the recommendation that classrooms be "technologically smart." And the recommended academic programs are being phased in, like an arts magnet starting at Bates Middle School this fall and the Middle Years Programme that's now in three middle schools.

Others, like Annapolis Middle, are planning to scrutinize this year's MSA data to see where individual students are falling short and give them the help they need to raise their scores, said Principal Carolyn Burton-Page.

Ms. Beall said reform is on the horizon but much of it is held up by money. Extending the school day and adding classes and programs are expensive, and so far there hasn't been enough for county schools to make all the changes they want.

"I think eventually they will," she said. "There's constant massaging. Sometime in the not-too-far future, we'll see some changes."