Students are often required to create work in a vacuum, handing in papers to an inauthentic audience for the purpose of receiving a grade. As a result, students often neglect to consider the effects that their work can have on others. In this article, the author highlights an art project from her middle school in Kings Park, New York, that…

Over the past three decades, much of the conversation about LGBTQ students in schools has centered on safety--anti-bullying policies, the "safe space" of gay-straight alliances, and "safe zones" marked by rainbow-colored stickers on classroom doors. In this article, Michael Sadowski argues that it's time to move beyond safety…

In 1995, South Side Middle School in New York implemented an organizational change and provided accelerated math instruction for all students. It is proposed that taking advance math in high school was strongly associated with successful completion of college, which inturn, correlates with subsequent educational and employment opportunities.

The I-Search, an interdisciplinary, student-centered inquiry process, is an integral part of an upstate New York middle school's curriculum. Students are immersed in a motivating theme, develop their own search plans, follow and revise these plans as they gather information, and prepare papers as foundations for oral reports, skits, posters, or…

Students' success in high school depends on the subjects selected in middle school, which in turn influences the choice of subjects in college. Some of the steps that Mamaroneck Union Free School District has undertaken to improve academic performance of students, especially minority ones, are improving school facilities, introducing a new math…