A two-year collaborative effort between the Texas Education Agency, the University of North Texas, and the Garland Independent School District developed a model at-risk program for large school districts. The program's two phases were developing a core group of personnel and conducting train the trainer activities. (JOW)

Summarizes a study to determine the importance that 77 east Texas middle school principals accorded middle school concepts and to discover degree of concepts' implementation. Survey respondents considered the majority of 30 middle school characteristics important. There were considerable gaps between perceived importance and actual implementation…

Describes the writing experiences of a group of gifted fifth and sixth grade students in the Active Learning Experiences in Resourceful Thinking (ALERT) program in Abilene, Texas. (HTH)

As middle school educators refine interdisciplinary teaming, numerous challenges have emerged, notably the development of interdisciplinary units and personality-compatible teams, design of instruction to challenge honor students while motivating low achievers, and integration of subject areas into thematic topics. As the New Kids pilot project…

This sourcebook of over 100 Texas middle-school programs was developed to help educators implement intermediate-grade education concepts and practices in their schools. The volume is a companion publication to "Spotlight on the Middle: Report of the Texas Task Force on Middle School Education." The introduction mentions two offices in…

Discusses a collaboration among an educator, a historical archaeologist, and a historian in order to create a local history curriculum that focuses on the life of African Americans on a Texas farm. Discusses how the curriculum was actually developed focusing on the role of the three team members. (CMK)

Explains Cultural Connections, a model for implementing constructivist, intercultural distance learning partnerships. Highlights include a theoretical framework; social constructivist pedagogy; intercultural communication; telecommunications; Web pages; and examples of a middle school partnership in Texas, a fourth-grade connection between Texas…

Profiles teachers' everyday experiences at a southeastern Texas middle school that mainstreams most of its special needs students. Classroom observations, accompanied by teacher and student survey data, showed that mainstreaming had deleterious effects. Since teachers spent a disproportionate amount of time serving special education students,…

This summary highlights implementation strategies from the full report for restructuring middle grade education in Texas. The task force was guided by a central theme--a vision of Texas schools using each other as resources and the campus planning process as a vehicle for implementing research-based concepts and practices in the middle grades.…

This paper describes a cooperative effort, part of a school/university partnership between the Graduate School of Education and the School of Information and Library Studies at the State University of New York at Buffalo, in which a core curriculum was developed and coordinated in library research skills and information technology for two…

This report envisions Texas schools using one another as resources and the campus planning process as a vehicle for implementing research-based concepts and practices in the middle grades. Since Texas' restructuring effort will not succeed without commitment to staff development from all levels of the education community, the need for teacher and…

The Write for Your Life project allows students to examine life events that affect their health and well-being by creating spaces for them to inquire into the circumstances of their lives. This paper examines Write for Your Life in a Texas middle school with a diverse student population, focusing on three students' writing projects. (SM)

A new teacher confronted the reading and writing needs of 22 fifth-graders in a small South Texas community that is home to Mexican American migrant laborers. The children, many of them Spanish language-dominant, were performing significantly below grade-level norms; many did not read or write at all. In 1 year, these students were reading and…