Archived: The Educational System in the United States: Case Study Findings

Policies and Procedures That Influence
Achievement in Middle Schools
Curriculum policies at the middle school level often pertained to textbook selec-
tion and to the division of students into course levels by their level of ability. We

---

44
found that, as in the case of the elementary schools, the high-achieving middle
school (Vanderbilt) gave teachers the greatest autonomy in the development of
courses and the use of textbooks. Vanderbilt also was the most active school in
coordinating curriculum content with the high school to which their students
would go following the eighth grade.
We found that most of the middle schools provided at least some courses at more
than one level of difficulty. The criteria used to divide students into different
course levels most often were the student’s previous grades, their test scores on
standardized exams, and their teacher’s recommendations. Students were most
commonly divided into ability levels for mathematics, science, and language arts
classes, although there was variation among the schools. Vanderbilt tracked stu-
dents into five levels of math courses in the eighth grade, and students with the
highest test scores were offered an opportunity to begin taking math classes at
the high school through a special program.
At King Junior High, students were tracked in math and in languages but not in
other subjects. Math was offered in three levels beginning in the seventh grade.
Similar tracks in math were found in East City Middle School. However, in the
lowest-achieving middle school that we visited, math was offered at only two lev-
els. The students enrolled in accelerated math were part of a special program at
this school to separate and challenge ‘‘those students who are working at or
slightly above grade level, and raise the expectations and the work requirements.’’
The parents of students in this school were also required to commit to support
their student in writing when their student joined the accelerated track.
Most of the middle schools we visited had explicit homework policies that were
spelled out in their 
Parent/Student Handbook. 
The eighth-grade students we
spoke to in Metro City and in East City said that they could expect 1 to 2 hours
of homework per night. Only one school did not have a written homework pol-
icy. In this school, the length of homework assignments was left up to the discre-
tion of the teachers.
Teachers we spoke to also indicated that they adjusted homework requirements
to the students in the course. For instance, one teacher at King Junior High, a
middle-achieving school, said:
I let prealgebra 1 students do homework in class, but not the prealgebra 2
or scholars math kids. If I didn’t let them do it in class, 80–90 percent of the
prealgebra 1 kids wouldn’t do it, because they can’t keep track of their stuff.

---

45
Completion of homework was also a controversial issue at the lowest-achieving
middle school, Metropolitan, where completion of homework assignments was a
chronic problem among students who lacked parental support.
All of the middle schools in Metro City had computers available for in-class
instructional purposes. However, the actual use of computers varied a great deal
from school to school, and some schools had much more extensive computer
facilities and offered more opportunities for students to interact with computers.
One example of in-class computer use was demonstrated by a science teacher at
Metropolitan, who used a computer program that simulated the dissection of a
frog in her biology course. Another very different usage was observed at Vander-
bilt, where students learned how to use an electronic spreadsheet in the com-
puter lab as part of their math lesson. Vanderbilt also offered a computer course
as an elective course for students; however, we did not find that this was a com-
mon offering at other middle schools.
Calculators were used in the middle schools we visited, and most of the middle
school math teachers we spoke with indicated specifically that they allowed stu-
dents to use calculators as a time-saving device, particularly when working with
fractions.