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"Schools to Watch" is an initiative launched by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform in 1999. The National Forum is an alliance of more than 60 educators, researchers, and officers of national associations and foundations dedicated to improving schools for young adolescents across the country.

Through the Schools to Watch initiative, the National Forum identified four schools across the United States that were well on their way to meeting the Forum's criteria for high performance. Forum members believe that three things are true of high-performing middle-grades schools:

• They are academically excellent – these schools challenge all students to use their minds well.

• They are developmentally responsive – these schools are sensitive to the unique developmental challenges of early adolescence.

• They are socially equitable – these schools are democratic and fair, providing every student with high-quality teachers, resources, and supports.

To achieve this level of performance, high-performing schools establish norms, structures, and organizational arrangements to support and sustain their trajectory toward excellence. They have a sense of purpose that drives every facet of practice and decision-making.

Selecting schools to watch through our state program.

Since 2002 all schools to watch are identified through the growing state program. States appy to be recognized as a state STW, receive technical assistance to establish the state program and conduct the identification process. Each state program serves as a beacon to guide contemporary school improvement and middle-grades educational policy.

Selecting Schools to Watch

To find these schools, the National Forum polled its members for nominations. Members nominated 64 schools who were then invited to submit written applications. The Forum then requested additional quantitative and qualitative data, concentrating particularly on academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, and social equity.

Twenty-eight schools applied, and Forum members selected nine of these for one-day site visits in the spring and fall of 1999. Of this smaller group, the Forum selected four schools for return three-day visits in the fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000. At least three site visitors were assigned to each school for the second visit. During this visit, extensive data was collected, and dozens of interviews were conducted with students, teachers, parents, administrators, business partners, and the principal. Classroom observations were conducted, and Forum site visitors sat in on team meetings and socialized with students in the lunchroom. The school tours on this site are based on the data gathered during those visits, and as such, the information presented in them is valid as of the dates during which the visits were made.

The Forum selected Barren County Middle School in Glasgow, Kentucky and Jefferson Middle School in Champaign, Illinois in May 1999. During the second and final selection round in December 1999, the Forum selected Freeport Intermediate School in Freeport, Texas and Thurgood Marshall Middle School in Chicago, Illinois.

Common Threads

While each school faces different challenges related to its location, student demographics, levels of district support, and other factors, the Forum's site visitors observed some common themes across all four schools:

• The schools know and articulate the academic outcomes they seek. In some cases, the outcomes are prescribed by the state or district; in others the faculty have adopted the outcomes recommended by their various disciplines.

• The schools are taking deliberate steps to help students achieve those outcomes by making strategic changes in curriculum, teaching, and school services.

• The schools have set benchmarks for implementing their strategies, and hold themselves accountable for specific results. We cannot stress too much the importance of data in the lives of these schools.

• Each school strategically concentrates its energies on important focus areas. As a result, the changes in each school are burrowing deeply into its culture.

• The schools have strong, visionary leaders who can articulate challenging goals, and motivate faculty and staff to reach those goals.

School Snapshots

This site includes snapshots of each of the schools – examples and stories from one moment in time that create a picture of what a high-performing school looks like. There has been no attempt to be exhaustive. The Forum has chosen each school’s most powerful lessons, and expects visitors to this site to question why a particular anecdote or analysis is used to illuminate one criterion rather than another. In these extremely coherent schools, there is rich overlap.

We invite you to take a leisurely “tour” of the four schools, have a virtual meeting with each principal, and take a careful look at how each school has grappled with the National Forum's criteria for high performance.

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