As a reviewer of middle level schools, their programs, policies, curricula, mission statements, instructional behaviors, assessment processes, and student-oriented community the author offers observations that can promote better student equity. He suggests: (1) "Producing Equity Belief Statements." Mission, Equity, or Inclusion…

How can middle school mathematics teachers navigate their roles as authorities in managing classroom democracies while providing their students with opportunities to exercise their rights? The concept of complementarity (Vithal, 1999) acknowledges that a teacher's authority is not always in conflict with students' rights or agency, but instead a…

The authors of this article call upon classroom memories to demonstrate the harm of the standardized testing apparatus in the English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Goal setting under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) has led to targeted school intervention based on metrics, and many states have chosen to double down on standardized ELA and…

Is specialized middle level teacher preparation necessary? This essay offers the authors' thoughts regarding middle level teaching and the necessity of specialized middle level teacher preparation. The reader is encouraged to further the discussion of middle level teacher preparation from advocacy to actualization.

The author, a former middle school teacher and now an associate professor at The University of Minnesota, was asked to write an essay for the inaugural issue of this journal that: (1) advanced the call for a more diverse dialogue in the field of middle grades education; and (2) addressed the question, "Why do we need more provocative debate…

A common argument leveled against charter schools is that they attract the most motivated and intelligent students from already struggling public schools. Marcus Winters seeks to examine this claim, known as "cream-skimming," by comparing the performance of New York City's (NYC) charter middle schools with a set of traditional selective…

I examine the ways in which reading in the classroom is a social practice and how that social practice can produce nuanced student texts that reflect a rich understanding of what has been read. In doing so, I also consider how the reading environment allows us to manipulate and embody texts in ways that allow for a more detailed understanding than…

When the author returned to teaching after several years in graduate school, she came armed with knowledge and visions of a student-centered classroom. Her experiences in a doctoral program taught her much about effective mathematics instruction and rekindled her desire to teach. However, a student-centered classroom reflected a major shift in…

This rejoinder provides a reply to comments on a middle school college readiness index, which was devised to generate earlier and more nuanced readiness diagnoses to K-12 students. Issues of reliability and validity (including construct underrepresentation and construct-irrelevant variance) are discussed in detail. In addition, comments from…

The US Department of Justice released the final report on school violence and showed that middle school is the age when violence is high, accounting for more than 70% of all violence cases (Zweig et al., 2013). After having perpetrated, the probability that the perpetrator will commit violence again will increase significantly (Office of the…

In an article published in "Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice," Gaertner and McClarty (2015) discuss a college readiness index based, in part, on nonacademic or noncognitive factors measured in middle school. Such an index is laudable as it incorporates important constructs beyond academic achievement measures that may be…

The findings of the Gaertner and McClarty article (2015) raised awareness on two extremely important topics related to college readiness: First, to effect change, we must measure students' progression towards college readiness throughout their K-12 career rather than just at the culmination of high school. Second, college readiness encompasses…

According to the author's website, Danica McKellar's first book is meant to serve as a resource for middle school girls to help them understand math concepts that are commonly confusing. This review will explore McKellar's use of mathematical contexts for presenting mathematical content and consider how these contexts may or may not limit the ways…

Educators frequently claim that the projects in which they are involved are democratic. However, considering the multiple and often conflicting notions of democracy and democratic education, are there any shared understandings of what either of those notions means? Does the claim that a project is democratic carry with it any shared assumptions,…

Using data from a large southwestern school district, Bui, Craig, and Imberman investigated the effects of gifted and talented programming on middle school students' achievement and behavior (attendance and discipline) through two avenues. Using a regression discontinuity design for the first set of analyses, the authors took advantage of a…