In education circles, a lot of attention is placed on the bookends. Pre-K programs have gained a lot of attention lately as the cure for many of problems that schools face down the line, and high schools get praise for adapting and creating programs for 21st century learners. But what about the middle? Students in grades six through eight often get ignored by the masses, and everyone just tries to forget their own awkward middle school years (maybe that’s why middle schools are often forgotten).
In a new ACT report, researchers say that middle school is a predictor for how students will do later in life. Sure, it’s a painful time to be a thinking about the future, and BoardBuzz doesn’t think anyone reading this would want to think back to their middle school years as a predictor of how we would do in college or the workplace, but according to the report:
“The level of academic achievement that students attain by eigth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school.”
So perhaps that means that we need to spend a little more time meeting in the middle. Or at least realizing that it’s the sum of all of the parts that makes the whole student, not just one end of the spectrum.
