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Middle school. The very words are enough to make many Americans shudder with memories of social anxiety, peer pressure, bad haircuts, and acne. But could middle schools also be bad [...]

The present study aims to advance the extant research base by evaluating the implementation and effectiveness of an academic vocabulary program designed for use in mainstream middle school classrooms with high proportions of language minority learners. The quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study was conducted in 21 classes (13 treatment matched to 8 control) in seven middle schools in a large district, with 476 sixth-grade students (346 language minority learners, 130 native English speakers). Classroom observations and teacher logs indicated the 18-week program was implemented with good fidelity and that the approach contrasted sharply with the standard district English language arts (ELA) curriculum. Multilevel modeling indicated that the program resulted in significant effects on several aspects of vocabulary knowledge, including meanings of taught words (d = 0.39; p < .0001), morphological awareness (d = 0.20; p = .0003), and the word meanings as presented in expository text (d = 0.20; p = .0227). The program also yielded marginally significant, but promising effects on a depth of word knowledge measure (d = 0.15; p =0.0830) and a norm-referenced measure of reading comprehension (d = 0.15; p = .0568). No effects were found on a norm-referenced vocabulary measure. These effects were comparable for language minority learners and their native-English-speaking classmates. Data from teachers shed light on the challenges of meeting students' diverse instructional needs and the roles of curriculum and professional networks in building instructional capacity. The findings show promise in developing effective multifaceted vocabulary instruction for implementation by ELA teachers in middle school classrooms with high numbers of language minority learners., Students attending schools in urban settings rarely experience the same opportunities to learn literacy skills as their counterparts in suburban settings (Gandara, Rumberger, Maxwell-Jolly, & Callahan, 2003; Hakuta, 1998; Snow, [...]

Issues related to the rise of middle schools, to serve the needs of children aged 10 to 13, are discussed, focusing on the educational reforms implemented in New Zealand during the 1990s. Topics include debates over whether three- or four-year middle schools are better; the role of communities in education; disagreements within teacher associations over middle schools; and school competition.

There have been many calls for the specialized professional preparation of teachers of young adolescents (Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1989; Dickinson & Butler, 1994; Douglass, 1920; McEwin, 1992a; Van […]

What happens to children when they reach the middle school years? Some "A" students begin to make "F's." Some rambunctious boys turn sullen. For too many of our youth, middle […]

School context, structure and experiences have significant effects on African American male students' performance in middle and high school. Findings reveal that students perform poorly in urban schools and that school discipline is a factor leading to such poor academic performance. Remediation, retention and suspension, as forms of social control, are siginificantly related to academic failure among African American males in middle and high school.

The results and strategies of the study conducted, to know the impact of the movement to middle schools for on time high school completion on students are discussed.