Meeting the Needs of All Middle School Students

Background

Emolior Academy was one of the lowest performing middle schools in New York City and joined New York City Department of Education’s (NYCDOE) Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI).

The Middle School Quality Initiative (MSQI) is the New York City Department of Education’s focused effort to expand the number of middle schools that prepare students for college and career success. It is the product of the New York City Council Middle School Task Force ongoing collaboration with the DOE. MSQI serves as the city’s implementation plan for putting the Carnegie Reading Next report recommendations into action. Over 130 middle grades schools across the city are now benefiting from MSQI’s comprehensive literacy framework.

Goals for the Work

• Provide support for both the tiered intervention in Grades 6 and 7 and the ELA teachers as they introduced a new curriculum across the school
• Increasing students’ ability to comprehend complex text and improve outcomes for students through explicit teaching of comprehension strategies
• Introducing small group work so students can collaborate in text-based discussions using analyzed student assessment data from the comprehension assessment Degrees of Reading Power (DRP)
• Use data to develop a tiered intervention strategy where students receive appropriate interventions

Outcomes of the Work

• All ELA classes now have explicit teaching of comprehension strategies in place and students are more deeply engaged in increasingly complex texts
• Increased focus on data resulted in students being grouped and regrouped following analysis of DRP data
• ELLs are provided with reading instruction to suit their developing level of English competence
• Instruction is aligned across the grades and to student needs in meeting the CCSS from year to year
• Resources for ELA are engaging for students and teachers have a wide variety of materials to enhance the curriculum
• DRP results for the 8th grade students who participated in MSQI since the work was performed show an increase in comprehension