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A major national report that examines the crucial stage at which middle school students and their parents must begin to make choices about going to college. Parents of adolescent students are in a unique position to help ensure their children's success in postsecondary education as they could provide early guidance in the relevancy of college to success in life, academic preparation, and high educational aspirations.

The benefits and criticism of increased assessment or testing are discussed. Increased testing helps teachers monitoring students' learning process and their own teaching strategies and school curriculum. The main criticism is "lack of value to education in its current incarnation." Suggestions of improved assessment are recommended.

Effective middle level educators seek to design homework that is motivating, enriching, and relevant. Homework is part of a comprehensive effort to help students learn skills and relate new information to their prior knowledge and experiences. Examples of Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of higher-order thinking skills and RAFTS assignments are provided. Wormeli, R. (2002). Help with homework. Middle Ground, 5(4), 19-21.

The concepts and importance of courageous leadership is explained. The impact on educators and on students is also addressed.

Engrade is a free set of web-based tools for educators allowing them to manage their classes online while providing parents and students with 24/7 real-time online class information. It's private, secure, truly free, and unbelievably easy to use - so join over 50,000 teachers and start using Engrade today.

This book is the result of research by the Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST). Their position is that the use of technology can be used to transform the nature of the curriculum itself. The e-book version has links to resources that make it a wealth of information regarding universal design for learning (UDL). UDL is a framework that can help you turn the challenges posed by high standards and increasing learner diversity into opportunities to maximize learning for every student. Drawing upon new knowledge of how the brain works and new technologies and media now available for teaching and learning, UDL frames a systematic approach to setting goals, choosing or creating flexible materials and media, and assessing students accurately.

This document provides information on STEM education publications that may be of interest to DR-K12 grantees for the purposes of (1) disseminating knowledge and products and (2) developing partnerships with stakeholders and end users. These publications were chosen because they provide researchers and developers with an opportunity to present their work to individuals that could use, promote, or improve the work. We gave preference to organizations and publications that target practitioners and policymakers, though we also included some focused on the research and academic communities. Information for this index was collected primarily from organization websites. Manuscript submission guidelines and notes were provided as available on the websites. We made our best attempt to identify whether submissions were peer-reviewed, though some publications were not explicitly clear on this matter.

The Middle School Portal is built specifically for middle school math and science teachers. Improve your content knowledge, more effectively integrate technology, connect to just in time teaching ideas, and search or browse by subject lists based on the national math and science education standards.

Context of teacher learning is described. Strategies are suggested for promoting teacher learning. Maute, J. (2003). The spirit of teaching learning. Middle Ground, 6(3), 10-12.

Data-driven decision making often uncovers new and important information that can be persuasive enough to move us to action. The values of data-driven decision making is suggested. The 3-stage data-driven decision model is proposed. Streifer, P. A. (2003). Data-driven decision making: What it takes to make decisions. Middle Ground, 6(4), 10-13.

Curriculum integration involves not only helping students make connections across content areas, but also promoting democracy in the classroom. The concepts of curriculum integration are discussed. The reactions of teachers, students, and parents to curriculum integration are reported. Paterson, J. (2003). Curriculum integration in a standards-based world. Middle Ground, 7(1), 10-12.

Three paradigms related to teaming and how the might be revised to improve the quality of today's middle school programs are discussed: team configurations, teaming for interdisciplinary instruction, and teaming and advisory. Rottier, J. (2003). Variations on a team: changing paradigms. Middle Ground, 7(2), 10-12.

The Consortium for School Networking reports the emerging technologies in the areas of instruction and assessment and their characteristics. Recommendations for technology decision makers are also provided.

Using the example of Shelburne Community School in Shelburne, Vermont, the authors emphasize the importance of involving students and parents in assessment and portfolio processes. Smith, C., & Myers, C. (2001). Students take center stage in classroom assessment. Middle Ground, 5(2), 10-16.

Chunking is one of many instructional strategies supported by recent research about the human brain. By chunking we make sense of the randomness and improve the chances of moving the information to long-term memory. Strategies of chunking are suggested. Wormeli, R. (2002). Beating a path to the brain. Middle Ground, 5(5), 23-25.