Grade Configuration: Who Goes Where?

The Northwest Sampler - Washington

Location
Eckstein Middle School
3003 N.E. 75th Street
Seattle, WA 98115

Contact
Lynn Caldwell, Principal
Phone: 206/281-6120
Fax: 206/281-6693

Grade span: Six through eight

With close to 1,200 students, Eckstein Middle School is the largest of Seattle's middle schools. Eckstein has adopted structures and practices that create a positive, student-centered learning environment, making it one of the most desirable of the city's middle schools with a waiting list of 100 to 200 students every year.

Like many large middle schools, Eckstein is divided into three grade-level houses. Each house has its own administrator and counselor and each is divided into interdisciplinary teams with 120 students assigned to a team of teachers—math, language arts, and social studies at the sixth- and seventh-grade level, and language arts and social studies at the eighth-grade level. The team members collaborate to help students achieve academic and personal goals. The school believes the team structure improves student-teacher relationships, motivation, attendance, behavior, attitudes toward school, peer relationships, and understanding of individual student needs. Perceived advantages for teachers are increased intellectual stimulation, improved student discipline and instructional delivery, and personal relationships with colleagues. Protecting the integrity of the teams is the school's highest priority.

The teachers on a team have a common prep time and are usually housed in the same wing of the school so that students do not have to go far for most classes. A half-hour period in the morning with one of the team teachers or an elective teacher serves as an advisory, homeroom, or study period.

To ease transition for sixth-graders the school devotes the first day of the school year to orientation and has a weekly house assembly for sixth-graders only. Aside from P.E., sixth-graders take classes only with other sixth-graders. Seventh- and eighth-graders take electives with mixed grades. Within the team structure, Eckstein has language arts and social studies for capable students and honors math at each grade level.

The curriculum at Eckstein is structured to assure that the door to higher education stays open for all students. For instance, all eighth-grade students—no matter what math class they take—are exposed to algebra concepts. All sixth-graders take a 10-week foreign language exploratory class in which they are exposed to French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Students are encouraged to hold aspirations to higher learning; for instance, they attend precollege activities such as college fairs, usually attended only by high school students.

Observed Outcomes

• Eckstein students ranked above average in feeling safe at school, according to the district's annual student survey
• The Eckstein faculty is highly professional
• The relationship between staff and students is better than average for the district, according to the district's annual student survey; teachers "treat students like their own kids"
• Scores on standardized tests of reading, language, math, and science are above average for the district and the state
• The percentage of students performing at a "satisfactory" level (based on grade point average, course completion, and test scores) is higher than that of other district middle schools

Keys to Success

• The staff is committed to the team structure and house organization
• The faculty promotes appropriate course-taking patterns that leave the doors open to education beyond high school

Location
Komachin Middle School
3650 College Street, S.E.
Lacey, WA 98503

Contact
Norm Bykerk, Principal
Phone: 360/438-8800
Fax: 360/438-8802

Grade span: Seven through eight

Komachin Middle School is a two-year school with a socially and ethnically diverse population of 780 students. Komachin divides its students into three houses of mixed seventh- and eighth-graders, each in a wing of the school. Each house has at least two teachers in each of four content areas: science, math, language arts, and social studies. The house teachers work as a team. Four of the eight teachers at a time have a common prep period. All classes, except for P.E., exploratory mini-courses, and other enrichment such as music, take place in the wing. The school has assigned a counselor to each house. The counselor for the house has an office in the wing and is available to students full time. The day begins with a 31-minute advisory period for orientation activities, transition activities, fund raising, service learning projects, and other activities.

Before the school opened in 1992, staff members found they could not define any significant learning differences between seventh- and eighth-graders. As a result, they decided to reorganize the district's existing curriculum by integrating content areas. For instance, in other district middle schools life sciences is taught in seventh grade and physical sciences in eighth grade. At Komachin the two are blended in a two-year science class and organized around broad themes along with social studies, language arts, and math. For the 1996-97 school year the themes for the core courses were explorations (the self), connections (the group), and changes (the community). Curriculum threads include environmental education (quality of life), the idea of diversity (recognizing and appreciating differences), and the idea of service (doing for others).

The grade levels as well as the curriculum at Komachin are integrated. Each class is composed of 50 percent seventh-graders and 50 percent eighth-graders. The curriculum occurs in a loop, but one year is not a prerequisite to the next or a progression from the last. If seventh-graders start school during the second year of the curriculum, they will do the first year as eighth-graders.

Komachin tries to create as much continuity as possible during the students' brief stay by placing them with the same group of teachers for the entire two years. The school also tries to delay high school transition activities until as late in the eighth-grade year as possible. This way students don't have the sense that their time at the school is over before it actually is.

Komachin does not offer many electives. The focus is on the integrated curriculum. The applied technology and art teachers, for example, do not teach their own self-contained classes but work full time on a flexible schedule with the team teachers to support content areas.

Observed Outcomes

• Students learn to work well in groups. They have a sense of what quality is, and they are comfortable with public speaking because of Komachin's emphasis on performance-based assessment. The high schools have noted these qualities.
• Test scores are as good or better than those of other middle schools in the district.

Keys to Success

• The faculty maintains a clear vision and keeps its focus on curriculum and instruction. For instance, the staff does not have traditional faculty meetings. They have content meetings.
• Because of levy failure teachers no longer have a weekly late start day for planning; however, the principal feels that such planning time is especially important when teachers are using an integrated curriculum and performance-based assessment.