Education Next's recent article on middle schools (?Stuck in the Middle?) reminds us how difficult it is for middle schools to serve students well. (The study the article is based on showed that students in K-8 schools performed better in the middle grades than those jumping from, say, a K-5 building to a middle school.)
Knowing the challenges inherent to middle grades makes it all the more impressive that one of Fordham's sponsored schools, Columbus Collegiate Academy (CCA) serving grades 6-8 in one of the city's poorest neighborhoods, is one of the very best urban public middle schools in the entire state (the fourth highest overall and the second best charter).
Each year Fordham analyzes? performance data of schools and districts in Ohio's Big 8 cities, and provides a ranking of each city's schools by Performance Index (PI) score, a weighted average of proficiency results among all tested students in that school (PI ranges from 0-120 and 80 means that all tested students, on average, met proficiency). The chart below sorts out only those public schools in Ohio's Big 8 serving primarily middle grades (so no K-8 or 7-12 schools; this particular grade configuration is why no Cincinnati or Dayton schools make the list) and ranks them accordingly. It also includes the schools' percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch.
As you can see, there's a good mix of charter and traditional district middle schools doing a phenomenal job. And many of these have very high rates of poverty (percent eligible for FRL, to be exact), including CCA which has over 94 percent of its students qualifying. These middle schools should be celebrated, indeed. When it comes to K-12 urban public education, they have possibly the toughest job of all.
- Jamie Davies O'Leary
