The D.C. Council wants to crack down on the poor student retention in the city’s middle schools, an increasingly important issue as enrollment in the District’s elementary schools rises.
At a hearing held Wednesday, Chairman Kwame Brown said the city’s middle school students — sixth through eighth graders — were getting lost in the transition from primary to secondary school. The city’s high school graduation rate, which is the lowest in the nation, suffers as a result, he said.
“Fifty-three percent of students who drop out do it by ninth grade; 80 percent do it by 10th grade,” Brown said. “Clearly there’s a problem with the transition between middle school and high school.”
Council members Wednesday were gathering information so they can craft legislation that will tackle the public schools’ retention issues. In addition to the number of children who drop out by 10th grade, parents who can afford it often take their children out of D.C. Public Schools after elementary school. That has put the spotlight on middle schools as the key to turning those trends around.
But how to do it isn’t simple. A series of parents and educators testified Wednesday on topics ranging from the importance of after-school and mentoring programs for middle school students to funding teachers’ own continuing education.
Florence Fasanelli, associate program director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, noted that the District’s teachers have not had any professional development in math or science for the past three years.
That means “teachers may fall back on outdated teaching methods,” she said.
The city is also in the midst of transitioning from a junior high (grades seven through nine) to middle school system, a move intended to help children better adjust to the social and academic changes of high school. But Ward 5 still doesn’t have a middle school at all and the city is far from standardizing the ones it does have, educators said.
For example, algebra is not available at all middle schools. And the caliber of teachers vary by jurisdiction — 21 percent of teachers in Ward 3 are graded “highly proficient” and across the Anacostia River less than 4 percent in Wards 7 and 8 are.
