The joys and woes of teaching middle school children are well documented and effective middle school teachers are aware that they must address their students' social and emotional needs to ensure they succeed academically. Hispanic, white and Asian American students were interviewed on their experiences in their first year of middle school and…

The Latino student presently faces many obstacles to achieve educational equity and excellence at the high school level. This article examines academic programming for Latino middle and high school English language learners (ELLs) and provides recommendations for addressing programming that promotes biliteracy policy and programming as a valued…

Research indicates that lower levels of school commitment may be one potential outcome of policy initiatives such as high-stakes testing and exit exams. Such outcomes may lead these policy initiatives to have unintended consequences for students, particularly racial or ethnic minority students. This study examines whether race or ethnicity…

The current study investigated how ethnicity and gender affect changes in the self-esteem of early adolescents during the middle school years. Self-report data were collected from more than 4,000 early adolescents from three ethnic groups: European American, African American, and Hispanic and analyzed using a consecutive three-year cross-sectional…

How does one turn a class of sixth graders who are uncomfortable with writing, unfamiliar with art supplies, but good at fidgeting and bickering, into a community that achieves literary, artistic, and civic success? In the spring of 2003, Kestrel Heights teachers asked the authors to team up and help their sixth grade students create something…

The purpose of this project was to gain a better understanding of dimensions of trust and inter-relationships between those dimensions during the adolescent years. Drawing from survey data collected at the beginning and end of a semester in eighty middle- and high-school social studies classes, relationships were assessed between: social trust,…

English language learners (ELLs) and students with disabilities are two groups specifically targeted in NCLB for which schools must demonstrate "adequate yearly progress." However, ELLs with disabilities, a category where these two groups overlap, are not specifically mentioned in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Students with…

Access to important educational resources in California's middle and high schools is not equal among schools that serve different student populations. Overall, the most disadvantaged populations of middle and high school students are likely to have the least access to the resources necessary for learning. California policymakers are focusing on…

For the first time in the 30-year history of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science, the organization is focusing on the nurturing of scientific talent in preschoolers and very young children. SACNAS, whose mission is to encourage Chicano/Latino and American Indian students to pursue graduate education and advanced…

Physical activity levels in girls decline dramatically during adolescence, most profoundly among minorities. To explore ethnic and racial variation in attitudes toward physical activity, semistructured interviews (n = 80) and physical activity checklists (n = 130) are conducted with African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian middle school girls in…

More than a decade ago, no one held out much hope for the poor, immigrant children at Kennedy Middle School. Nobody thinks that now. This article presents how Kennedy Middle School transformed and beat all the odds to be a "school to watch." In many ways, Kennedy Middle School has become a model of middle-grades improvement. Test scores,…

A main goal of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is to close gaps in test scores between different groups of students while raising achievement for all groups. Of particular concern are the persistent achievement gaps between African American, Latino, and Native American students and their white and Asian counterparts, and between students from…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 calls for improving test scores of minority students in third through eighth grades, making middle level schools a key venue for closing the racial gap in achievement. This study, by analyzing data on the 15,000 eighth graders who took the 2000 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics,…

The author, a teacher at an Indiana middle school, describes how her Mexican ESL students took a stand and helped make a statement against racism. These students, who had a fascination with Asian culture, were indignant when they read an article about a street in Texas called "Jap Road." Adamant that the road name should be changed, the…

The principles of psychology are an effective, yet underutilized resource within American schools. Teachers can take advantage of established interventions from the field of psychology and apply them to their classrooms in a realistic, straightforward manner, while still remaining in the role of the educator. A large part of cognitive-behavioral…