This is COURAGE - YOU NEED TO KNOW WHY. As Educators We are Loosing the Promise of Public Education at the Hands of Very Similar Types of Criminals! Its Happening All over the State.

This is COURAGE - YOU NEED TO KNOW WHY. As Educators We are Loosing the Promise of Public Education at the Hands of Very Similar Types of Criminals! Its Happening All over the State.

Please understand this is a 70+ year-old former U.S. Prosecutor! This man, Dr. Richard I. Fine is my hero and model for my fights to come with Moreno Valley USD which also is one of the most litigated school districts of it's size in the inland empire. For over 20 years the corruption spearheaded by the personalities of the COWARDS and BULLY BOYS RUNNING MVUSD'S HUMAN RESOURCES has rotted the structure of our district.  One of the former HR bully boys participated in felony misuse and theft of public funds as well as an act of agrregious criminal Nepotism as defined in California State Educ. Code. Another, HR thug, a convicted felon used an unregistered pistol firing at a car fleeing his house with his own daughter and her girlfriend inside the car. He was and is still employed and partially running a MVUSD middle school dealing with children daily, in spite his extraordinarily explosive temper. The current HR coward is mentioned as helping to cover up directly or indirectly the theft of  or miss use of  student funds that totals in the multiple $100,000s in cash  EVERY YEAR.


The man most responsible for this system wide cover-up, a man who lied more than once to me when I was looking for help with the apparent criminal activity I stumbled upon, was fired early this year then allowed to stay on with a double demotion to assistant principal. The Board was afraid that out and out firing would tempt him to tell all. 


Due to years of cover up i.e. elimination of positions with the power of oversight by some of the Superintendents and their assistants, including Bob Crank who was one of the key players, most area taxpayers are paying twice over for there child's education without knowing and some of that money is stolen in cash! Watch for the documentation and names to come.  BUT lets not forget the School Board who hires these people, among which contains a documented CHILD MOLESTER (who as part of his duties regularly visits elementary schools unescorted) and a yet to be charged; a criminal who used the power of the office for... well, come back and see. Another is on the payroll of a local Developer and member of the shadowy Jewish "Gold Trust" and its silent charter. An organization and individual who's home is somewhere in Beverly Bills, CA. I have fired off a letter to the Jewish Defense League* asking point blank if they are associated... 

Folks I lack the imagination to make this stuff up. I was as disbelieving as you probably are. Worse yet, there is more than eluded to herein.


Sincerely,
I praetorian

*The Jewish Defense League or JDL is a Jewish nationalist and far-right organization whose stated goal is to "protect Jews from antisemitism by whatever means necessary".^[1] While the group asserts that it "unequivocally condemns terrorism", and claims to have a "strict no-tolerance policy against terrorism and other felonious acts,"^[2] it was described as "a right-wing terrorist group" by the Federal Bureau of Investigation^[3] in 2001, and as a hate group involved in "anti-Arab terrorism" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.^[4] According to the FBI, the JDL has been involved in plotting terrorist attacks within the United States.^{[3] Outside the FBI, the}  Anti-Defamation League (ADL)^[2] and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).^[3 are the largest watch dog organizations monitoring hate groups in the U.S.  

This is the FIGHT of our Professional Careers. Are You In or Out? 

"Hell has a special level for those who sit by idly during times of great crisis."

Robert Kennedy

School Counseling Videocast: 
 The Silent Suffering of Too Many Teenage Girls

DEAR PARENTS... 

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL!

THIS idea... it's a damn GOOD ONE

I don't who came up with this idea... but it's a damn GOOD ONE!

Officials in Moreno Valley USD hope all students will take advantage of the free breakfast program that starts Tuesday at all 37 school sites in the Moreno Valley Unified District.

“A well-nourished child is one ready to learn,” said Carla Lyder, the district’s assistant director of nutrition services. “Our goal is to provide good food as part of the equation to support education. ”Ideally, she wants every one of the district’s 36,000 students to try the daily, no-cost breakfasts, which include waffles, pancakes, sausages, muffins, fruit, French toast, bagels and low-sugar cereals.

Research has linked school breakfast programs with higher test scores and grades, improved attendance and fewer referrals to school nurses. In California, evidence is mostly anecdotal. Some districts have begun to document the changes in student performances that follow school breakfasts.

About 56 percent of California students qualify for free or reduced-price meals, but less than one-third of those eligible take part in school breakfasts.

Missed meals mean missed money for cash-strapped districts. Statewide, they would have received an additional $350 million in federal meal reimbursements if school breakfast participation were as high as lunch participation. For districts hobbled by budget cuts, the reimbursements are critical.

In Moreno Valley Unified, breakfast participation is only one-third of that for the lunch program, which draws 22,000 to 25,000 students a day.

The social stigma, difficulty getting to school early and dependence on a parent’s work schedule are deterrents to school breakfasts, Lyder said. What’s more, each school’s breakfast times are different, some starting at 6:15, others at 8:20.

The district projects the free meal will increase breakfast participation a minimum of 10 to 15 percent. The nutrition department will order food week to week and buy more as numbers rise, Lyder said.The district won’t touch its reserves or general fund, but will re-invest money from the low-cost eligibility program to pay for the universal breakfast, according to Lyder. A computer program is in place to daily track breakfast eaters at each site, she said.


Ms. Lyder is right. It not only won't cost the district any extra, but may add to  it's shakey revenue stream. Not only, but it will partially change the socio-economic range of the district which in this case may raise test scores overall. NOT TO MENTION its the right thing to do. IMAGINE!

---

Can Anyone One of Us Wholly Appreciate the Sacrifice and Powerful Unwavering Strength in This Man's Character? Imagine Where We Might be if Only... !

As we Celebrate the Life and Triumphs of Dr. Martin Luther King... 
Let's not Forget that During Those Difficult Sometimes Horrifiing Times Dr. King was Among the First to Call the War in Vietnam Patently and Ethically Wrong.

NLRB Effects: Regulating Employee Use Of Social Media

This post was co-authored by Elizabeth Arce

Edited by I, Praetorian

 It seems that every time you turn on the news some new technological innovation is being announced.  For example, recent weeks have seen the unveiling of new tablet computers and smartphones.  In addition, social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn are constantly announcing upgrades to their websites to improve the way users communicate with one another via the internet.  However, just as technology is rapidly changing, the laws regulating the use of social media by school and public employees also continue to evolve in random statute and always after the fact.

Since these initial blog posts and article on legal developments regarding employee social media use, the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Office of General Counsel released a report analyzing various issues relating to social media use by employees and employer policies that attempt to regulate it.  In addition, two NLRB Administrative Law Judges (“ALJs”) issued decisions that provide further guidance in these areas. 

In Hispanic United of Buffalo (“HUB”), an ALJ ordered a nonprofit corporation to reinstate five employees who were fired after posting comments on Facebook criticizing workload and staffing issues.  The ALJ concluded that the employees engaged in protected concerted activity because they were discussing matters that involving terms and conditions of their employment. 

In Knauz BMW, an ALJ found that a car dealership’s employee handbook contained policies that restrict and limit an employee’s right to engage in concerted activity.  However, the ALJ upheld the employer’s termination of an employee who posted pictures of an accident at another dealership, also owned by his employer, with unflattering comments about the salesperson involved in it on the grounds that the posting was not protected concerted activity.

These recent pronouncements from the NLRB clarify the law regarding the scope of social media use by employees and provide the following guidance to employers:

1.    Employees’ Social Media Postings With Each Other About The Terms and Conditions of Their Employment Are Protected.  Employees engage in protected concerted activity when they use social media to communicate with one another about work related issues.  Concerted activity will also be found when the employee posts comments that express the views of other employees or that attempt to initiate or induce coworkers to take group action.  This can include complaints among employees about commissions, tax withholding practices and workload and staffing issues.  Thus, posts that are not work related or that express individual gripes, frustrations or complaints are not protected. 

2.    Work Related Postings That Are Sarcastic or Mocking in Tone May Be Protected.  In Knauz BMW, the ALJ considered two Facebook postings by the employee.  The first involved criticism of a sales event, including the inadequacy of the food being served, which employees felt could affect employee compensation.  The second posting involved an accident at another dealership.  The ALJ found that the posting concerning the accident was not protected concerted activity, and that the employer terminated the employee for that posting.  The decision discusses what language rises to the level of disparagement necessary find otherwise protected activities unprotected.  The NLRB has found statements that are mocking or sarcastic ,and terms such as “a-holes” and a “cheap son of a bitch” attributed to supervisors to be protected concerted activity when uttered in the course of otherwise protected concerted activity.  Employers must meet a very high threshold to prove language is disparaging and beyond protection in the context of employees acting together to challenge their working conditions.

3.    Polices That Can Be Reasonably Interpreted to Restrict Employees’ Right to Engage In Concerted Activity Are Improper.  In evaluating whether a social media policy improperly limits an employee’s ability to engage in protected concerted activity, employers should ask whether the rule or policy explicitly prohibits the exercise of this right or would reasonably tend to chill the employee’s exercise of it.  In order words, policies that could be interpreted as discouraging an employee to discuss the terms and conditions of employment are likely improper.

4.    Policies That Can Be Reasonably Interpreted to Protect the Relationship Between the Employer and Its Customers Are Proper.  In Knauz BMW, the ALJ determined that language in an employee handbook stating “[a] bad attitude creates a difficult working environment and prevents to [employer] from providing quality service to our customers” was proper.  The ALJ reasoned that the employer had a right to demand that its employees not display a bad attitude towards customers in order to protect the employer’s relationship with its customers.

Employers who have adopted social media policies should review them with the above guidelines in mind.  Finally, because the law in this area continues to rapidly change, employers should stay tuned to this blog and our Twitter (@lcwlegal and hashtag #lcwsocialmedia) for further updates.

·        

Did I Forget to Mention...
Moreno Valley Unified School District is falling possibly spiraling into the abyss of financial insolvency? That's the truth as best I can determine from financial records from previous years. The District can't even pay off the last attorney firm they used to defend themselves from the repercussions of their own petty often criminally liable personal attacks on their own employees by MVUSD administrators OR the swollen egos of the senior board trustees.


Go ahead ask, "now how would he know that?" I too have fallen victim to the same unwarranted attack on my professional and personal reputation and ultimately my employment for drawing attention to the multitude of problems in house at the district level first. Nothing. More cover-ups. More lies. The same things I write about here in my blogs. My exercise in 1st amendment rights. As it turns out HR and two senior board members are so anxious to get rid of me that they turned down their own attorneys' advice to settle this matter on two previous  occasions - that's right they ignored their own attorney's high-high priced advice twice in two months. They are burning your tax money on personal vendettas that could cost the district over a $million$ dollars in combined attorney's fees and court costs alone. If we go there, that will only be the price of admission. Three to Five years including appeals. WOW that's a ton of your money snatched right out of your child's education. You know the free and adequate education promised by state and federal law. As of today however that is the route we seem to be headed for. 


These two senior trustees and their HR puppet have squandered upwards of $30,000 dollars of your tax money to date on trying to conjure up a story that even their own attorney's know won't fly. All to make me go away. 8 mo.s without pay. Put off work for three months without explanation. Then the fictionalized allegations against me. Denied me due process. They will reach an easy $200-300 thousand if we have to ready for to civil action after the hearing on Thursday January 19, 2012. 


I tried as best I could to avoid this route. I have no interest in taking money from the kids I care about. I met secretly with Jesus Holguin in late November, 2010 and he promised to help that the problem was "being addressed as we spoke..." He lied. He didn't keep a single promise to correct the problem(s). He simply wanted to see the information I had gathered on Victoria Baca. A former board trustee that a friend and I helped to unseat. In fact Jesus voted to try and find a way to dismiss me, or starve me out. And Rick Sayre backed or forced that play. Rick is up for reelection in November. I now know why he doesn't want me digging around or anyone else for that matter. Much to come on his shenanigans and bully-boy tactics. He was right not to want me nosing around 
but 8 months without work tends to make me very curious. Come back soon, here at the only place you can get your hands dirty an keep your nails clean.
I, Praetorian

Prestige and respect, not only salary, are seen as crucial elements in the quest for a truly professional teacher workforce

By Stephen Sawchuk

One of the most troubling things that the 2010 National Teacher of the Year, Sarah Brown Wessling, hears about her profession can be summed up in a single observation: the idea that she and other top-performing colleagues are "just" teachers.

The word "just" serves as a reminder of a subtle mindset among some in the United States that a career in K-12 teaching, while considered noble, is nevertheless somehow seen as beneath the capacity of talented young men and women.

"People go into teaching because they are committed to young people, because they are incredible communicators or experts in their field," says Wessling, a high school English teacher in Johnston, Iowa. "But many people in our country see teaching as though it were something one chose as a fall back career. A type of government job with mediocre pay but good benefits. plug in for 20+ years then retire. WRONG! COULDN'T BE MORE SO. EMPLOYEES WITH THAT MIND SET USUALLY WASH OUT IN 3-4 YEARS. OR THEY FAST TRACK THEMSELVES OUT OF THE SCHOOL SITE AND INTO THE DISTRICT OFFICE ADMINISTRATION. THEY AREN'T GOING TO THROW AWAY THE 50-60 THOUSAND DOLLARS IT TOOK TO FIND OUT THEY HATE WORKING WITH KIDS AND PARENTS. IT IS NOT A AVOCATION FOR THE WEAK OF HEART OR LACKING IN PASSION FOR THE ENDEAVOR.

Its hard work and most people have unrealistic expectations of today's students and parents. And our own society sees us as mildly noble or just not ambitious enough to get into a real (read paying) field.
In Finland, the country whose education practices we've come to admire even more than the Japanese system that "W" and his cronies so often falsely and purposefully mislead us to believe were the apples to apples, the perfect example for the absolute need for NCLB. Lets not forget that NCLB was normed on fabricated test data from one or more districts in the Houston, Texas area that admitted to fixing the numbers. A thinly veiled attempt at crippling the public education system in lieu of a more privatized thereby inherently more exclusive system. I have joked sardonically about "W's" dream of a Walmart National Elementary School District for kids whose parents couldn't afford to pad their vouchers and send their children to the "nicer schools." The schools whose teachers weren't Chinese Factory Workers on assignment by the Beijing Government, under contract with Walmart Stores. International.

What would YOU do...

IF ONLY YOU KNEW?

Well folks, the "Press Enterprise newspaper" did a perfunctory articule on money missing from student fund coffers at three Moreno Valley Unified schools and how the district's accounting department was soooo contrite.

They are going to fix those schools! Attendance and all! If only those three schools represented the real problems. The fiscal wrong doings at Moreno Valley Unified School District are rampant and well beyond any three schools. So too, it has been alleged that such abuses extend back at least 15 years. However, the problems worsened and became more obvious under former Assistant Superintendent Robert Wallace Crank. Crank, eliminated all positions of fiscal over sight regarding MVUSD'S loosely and randomly regulated student fundraising. There has not been any meaning full systematic structure for handling and accountability in that 15 year span . No training of state aligned methods or manuals, bookkeeping software has been mysteriously been wiped out completely (with no server level back up to be found), on ASB account’s computers. Amazingly, on at least three ocassions; just ahead of some official inquiry by an outside agency or the treat thereof.

I do not however, think of the new Superintendent Dr. White as complicit. I believe though she has been kept uninformed by individuals with vested interest in keeping these things hidden. In any case, most of the personnel who knew the truth have left the district by now. Some retired some forced out by a VERY complicit school board  Those who have not gone and might speak honestly, are systematically being forced out by deceit, harassment,  and lies in the hopes of silencing the truth once and for all and avoiding an incredible amount of liability and embarrassment. The majority of this unethical and sometimes illegal action comes from a top administrator who 20 days into his new job at MVUSD, said he “was going to clean up the reputation of HR.” referring to the unethical behaviors notorious of the previous HR Director.

I am referring for the moment, of nearly half a million dollars a year.  May be more? Probably more. Stolen, misplaced, misappropriated, or just gone. One of the problems is almost all fundraising is done in cash. Due to the logistics of handling returned checks, the schools seldom take them anymore. Large sums of cash were kept in just about any lockable container. Sometimes for months on end.  As an example: In a singular ac, five years ago, $10,000 in cash was stolen directly from the safe at one MVUSD middle school. Under the circumstances I was told, it took less than ten minutes to accomplish and there were only five people who had all the necessary keys to walk in and out with the money. No investigation occurred and no further mention was made of it.  The only persons who should have the key and safe combination are the ASB (Associated Student Body or "government") accountant and the school principal.  The cash sits with no oversight and no truly accurate record of it's existance.  No club fundraising cash deposits go through the ASB cabinet approval process as do purchase orders or check requests. They are handled directly by the ASB accountant under the over site and responsibility of the principal.

About MVUSD "clubs." In general regarding fundraising; it is and has always been mandatory for students to pay to participate in extra-curricular activities. Fundraising seldom covers even half the student expenses. Recently this practice has been deemed ILLEGAL in law suits against surrounding school districts. However at MVUSD, the money parents pay is shown on School Board Minutes as “Voluntary Parent Contributions,” but the child can't participate without paying the fee.  Therefore, it appears that participation is neither voluntary nor a contribution. (Handout, gift, or offering.) The courts have recently interpreted "fair and adequate" to mean that all public school activities requiring parents to pay money or monies for participation; Must be offered free to any and all eligible students. This includes extracurricular sports and any student clubs. It is a violation of the law to charge parents or force students to fund raise their share. In one discussion, the practice was deemed "double dipping," because parents pay for their child's education through taxation. The court's interpretation extended to include uniforms and protective gear.

In keeping with previous years, more than one MVUSD principal of late has been implicated in possible financial wrongdoings regarding student funds. While seldom investigated by MVUSD in any fair and through manner, the problem itself best documented under deposition (Williams v. MVUSD 2006) by former Director of Secondary Education, Kim Kruger. Who further admitted under oath that the problem was commonplace and that he himself had problems regarding student funds as principal at Valley View High School.

More recently, regarding a here to unnamed middle school and their ASB student fund for the 2009-2010 school year; it opened school with a ledger balance rollover from the previous year, somewhere in the vicinity of $115,000.  Which is extremely high and a strange discrepancy in the rollover for any student fund account. This is the ASB general fund to which all other clubs, excluding parent run booster clubs, deposit their fundraising cash, draw their money, pay their bills and obtain their club status. At the end of these first two months, this middle school's account ledger reportly dropped to just over $4,000.  The ASB ledger entries for this school,  during this time period, are said to not make sense nor add up to any where near $100,000. This example was but one school and one school year in Moreno Valley Unified School District.

Next report; ASB and Booster Clubs. The difference between the two and why both are ripe for cash skimming.

Posted by I, Praetorian at 8:31 AM 

Praetorian: spent 4 years as an ASB co-director for MVUSD

Just My Opinion: Of the Two Young Men Shot in Redlands, CA...

Just My Opinion:

Thanks Dmayn1,
I knew one of the boys, Andrew from his time in our middle school. He was a good kid. It wasn't until today that I looked at his picture and realized that I knew him. ...its hard.


I don't know the details of what happened or how it was handled by authorities. But none of our children should ever be at risk of being hurt or killed anywhere anyway.


Our society has grown fat and lazy in its collective morals. We are loosing moral ground when as Americans we have every reason and opportunity to be gaining. The way we protect and nurture our kids is a flat out disgusting shame. From something like this to the way we treat children in Foster Care. WE choose the alter of the almighty green back long before the complete protection and education of our children.


January 20, 1961. JFK said in his inaugural address. " We hold in our mortal hands the means to cure all forms of human suffering and destroy all forms of Human life." We are still fighting over moral ground and electing fools to compromise it.


Seems between the life and times of our children are always used in compromise to the most base and self-important of the rich and therefore powerful eight percent of this American experiment in democracy fueled entirely, not by the greatness of our human possibilities but the hoarding selfness that exists in us all.

School Counseling Podcast

Help and Hope

2011 marred by test cheating scandals across US

DORIE TURNER, AP Education Writer 

Dec. 27, 2011 9:16 PM ET

ATLANTA (AP) — It was the year of the test cheating scandal.

From Atlanta to Philadelphia and Washington to Los Angeles, officials have accused hundreds of educators of changing answers on tests or giving answers to students. Just last week, state investigators revealed that dozens of educators in 11 schools in Georgia's Dougherty County either cheated or failed to prevent cheating on 2009 standardized tests.

In July, those same investigators accused nearly 180 educators in almost half of Atlanta's 100 schools of cheating dating back to 2001 — which experts have called the largest cheating scandal in U.S. history. At least 20 students have been charged on Long Island with cheating on SAT and ACT college-entrance exams by paying someone to take the test for them.

"It's a year in which cheating became a national scandal, a scandal of national proportions," said Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, which advocates against high-stakes testing. "The Atlanta case forced policymakers and journalists in other jurisdictions to look to see if there's anything similar going on in their backyards."

Experts say some educators have bowed to the mounting pressure under the federal No Child Left Behind law as schools' benchmarks increase each year toward the ultimate goal of having all children reading and doing math at their grade level by 2014. Teachers in Atlanta reported that administrators created a culture of "fear, intimidation and retaliation" where testing goals had to be met no matter what, according to investigators.

"This problem existed before No Child Left Behind, but NCLB has exacerbated the problem, clearly," said Walter Haney, a retired Boston College education professor and expert on cheating. "I think testing is really important, but the problem has been the misuse of test results without looking behind the test scores to see who and who is not tested."

Federal officials have been saying for more than a year that the law, which is four years overdue for a rewrite, doesn't accurately depict what's happening in schools. While federal lawmakers agree the law needs to be fixed, an overhaul has become mired in the partisan atmosphere in Congress.

At President Obama's invitation, states have begun filing waivers to get relief from the law. Under the 11 waivers already filed, states are asking to use a variety of factors to determine whether they pass muster and to choose how schools will be punished if they don't improve. Among the factors that could be used are college-entrance exam scores or the performance of students on Advanced Placement tests.

At least 39 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, have said they will file waivers, though it is unclear how many will get approved.

In Pennsylvania, an investigation continues into irregularities found in 2009 state standardized tests in reading and math. The probe began last summer after a routine forensics report flagged "highly improbable" results in 90 schools across the state.

The state education secretary ordered the 50 districts representing the named schools to conduct internal investigations and submit reports to him by Aug. 15., But nearly four months later, the reports are still being analyzed and have not been made public.

Twenty-eight of the flagged schools were in Philadelphia, the state's largest district. District representative Fernando Gallard said the system is talking with the state Department of Education over how to move forward with the cheating investigation.

In Washington, D.C., federal and city officials are investigating possible cheating in more than 100 schools from 2008 to 2010. The unusually high rate of erasures in those schools became known after a USA Today investigation into improbable test gains in more than 300 schools in six states and D.C.

City officials tossed out test results for three classrooms in May because of proven cases of cheating.

A Waterbury, Conn., principal resigned earlier this month over an alleged cheating scheme on the Connecticut Mastery Test. A dozen teachers who were also caught up in the scandal lost 20 days of pay and have to perform 25 hours of free tutoring.

In Los Angeles, teachers at three schools have resigned after being accused of coaching students or changing answers on tests. The test scores at two of those schools have been thrown out.

Schaeffer, who follows cheating scandals closely for years, said he's seen as many cheating stories this year as in the last half-dozen years combined. He said there have been confirmed cases of cheating in 30 states and D.C. in the last three years.

___

Reporters Kathy Matheson in Philadelphia and Brett Zongker in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

___

Published Online: November 28, 2011 

Includes correction(s): December 13, 2011

Study Links Academic Setbacks to Middle School Transition

By Sarah D. Sparks

Edited by I, Praetorian

While policymakers and researchers alike have focused on improving students’ transition into high school, a new study of Florida schools suggests the critical transition problem may happen years before, when students enter middle school.

The study, part of the Program on Education Policy and Governance Working Papers Series at Harvard University, found that students moving from grade 5 into middle school show a “sharp drop” in math and language arts achievement in the transition year that plagues them as far out as 10th grade, even risking thwarting their ability to graduate from high school and go on to college. Students who make a school transition in 6th grade are absent more often than those who remain in one school through 8th grade, and they are more likely to drop out by 10th grade. “I don’t see eliminating the transition at the high school level as important or beneficial as eliminating the transition at the middle school level,” said Martin R. West, an assistant education professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the study. “That to me is a really robust finding,” said David L. Hough, the managing editor of theMiddle Grades Research Journal and a dean emeritus of Missouri State University’s college of education, in Springfield. “All these people are focusing on the transition to high school; it looks to me like they need to be focusing on that transition to middle school.”

Mr. Hough, who was not involved in the Harvard study, has been developing a database of nearly 2,000 schools covering middle-level grades across 25 states. He said that roughly 6,000 schools nationwide are structured in the K-8 configuration and 8,000 are 6-8. While so-called “elemiddle” K-8 schools had been spreading more rapidly than regular middle schools in recent years, Mr. Hough said district moves to swap middle for elemiddle schools have “leveled off” since 2010.

Losing Their Edge
For the Florida study, Mr. West and Guido Schwerdt, a researcher with the Ifo Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich in Germany, used the state’s longitudinal database to track more than 450,000 students in the state’s public schools who proceeded from grades 3 to 10 between 2000-01 and 2008-09.

They found students who attended elementary schools ending at grade 5 had an early edge over those attending K-8 schools in mathematics and language arts, but their performance in both subjects dropped dramatically when they switched to middle school in 6th grade. After the 6th grade transition, middle school students fell by .12 standard deviations in math and .09 standard deviations in reading compared with students at K-8 schools, and then that gap continued to widen throughout middle school and into high school.

Moreover, students who had attended a middle school were 18 percent more likely than students who attended a K-8 school before high school to not enroll in grade 10 after attending grade 9—an indicator that they may have dropped out.

While the middle school drop was most pronounced in urban schools, Mr. West said the same general pattern was repeated in suburban and rural schools.

The Florida findings are “almost identical” to the results of a smaller, 2010 study of New York City public schools, Mr. West said. In it, Columbia University researchers found that students who started in K-5 or K-6 schools performed slightly better than their K-8 peers in math and language arts in 5th grade, but when they moved to a middle school, the K-8 and middle school students changed places, and the achievement gaps between those groups increased through 8th grade.

Mr. Hough has found there is “much popular experience about the shock students experience when first entering middle school from an elementary school, but precious little empirical data have been collected to examine it.”

Rather, he said, most researchers and policymakers focus on the transition into high school. In part, that may be because most students who drop out of high school do so in 9th or 10th grades, yet the Florida study found that the transition from middle to high school was much less traumatic for students than the one from elementary to middle school.

Florida students entering high school did see a drop in achievement, but it was temporary and only one-fifth the size of the drop seen during the middle school transition. “For the high school switchers, they suffer a little one-time drop but then recover,” Mr. West said. “It looks like a much less disruptive transition than the one to middle school; the high school transition is not that different from what you’d see in a typical school transition.”

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The onset of puberty can exacerbate normal transition problems for younger students, according to Patti Kinney, an associate director of middle-level services at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, in Reston, Va. “You’re looking at students making a transition during a time when tremendous physical, cognitive, and emotional transitions are going on at the same time,” Ms. Kinney said. “There’s a wide variety of maturation among different children at that level.”

In contrast, the Mountain View, Calif., research group EdSource found no difference between K-8 and 6-8 school achievement overall in its 2010 study of middle-grade achievement in California, “Gaining Ground in the Middle Grades,” but it did find some schools better than others at helping students transition into middle school, according to Matthew Rosin, an EdSource senior research associate.

“The picture we got was schools that were having higher-achievement outcomes were being more intense and intentional about looking at a wider array of student data [during the middle school transition] and finding out what interventions were needed quickly,” Mr. Rosin said.

Easing Transitions

For example, the 1,400-student La Merced Intermediate School, part of the Montebello Unified School District outside Los Angeles, asks the elementary teachers of all incoming 6th graders to fill out academic-history reports, including their previous grades and test scores, problem areas, favorite subjects, and extracurricular activities. “Those sheets allow teachers to go, ‘OK, what is the range of our students’ interests and how do we get them involved in the activities that really resonate with their interests?’ ” Mr. Rosin said.

The teachers from the smaller elementary schools that feed into La Merced also accompany their 5th grade students on a site visit to the middle school, to help the students learn the campus layout and prepare for the differences in structure from one grade to the next.

For the Florida study, the researchers used a survey of principals to compare instructional practices at the various schools, but did not find much difference between practices or class sizes at K-8 and 6-8 schools. However, they did find that 6-8 middle schools had more than twice as many students at each grade level, 363, than the 125 students per grade on average at K-8 schools.

That larger grade-level group may make it harder to tailor instruction and ease the moves from grade to grade, Mr. West suggested.

Ms. Kinney of the NASSP said that effective transitions should be “a process, not an event.” “A lot of times, people talk about transition programs, and they are talking about what they are doing in 9th grade, when they really need to be working with their middle schools to support students much earlier,” she said.

“Kids develop at their own rates; what’s important is how you are personalizing that environment for them,” Ms. Kinney said. “The grade configuration in a lot of ways is a secondary consideration.”

The NASSP’s Breaking Ranks in the Middlebook on improving student achievement in middle grades calls for schools serving those grades to provide each student with a “personal adult advocate” to help him or her understand the changing academic requirements and social dynamics.

“It is easy for those who don’t work regularly with middle-level students to forget that 6th graders are only five or six years removed from their teddy bears,” Breaking Ranksnotes, and “those who do work with middle-level students sometimes forget that, by the time students leave ‘the middle,’ the rigors of college are only four short years away.”

Special coverage on the alignment between K-12 schools and postsecondary education is supported in part by a grant from the Lumina Foundation for Education, at www.luminafoundation.org.

Vol. 31, Issue 13, Pages 1,23

RELATED STORIES

“NYC Study Gives K-8 Schools an Edge Over Middle Schools,” September 1, 2010.

“KIPP Middle Schools Found to Spur Learning Gains,” June 22, 2010.

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