Cross Case Features: Context

Emery Middle School: School Context

Emery Middle School serves 300 seventh- and eighth-grade students. Of these, 100 percent qualify for free breakfast and free lunch. Ninety-nine percent of the students are African American and less than one percent are Asian. Emery Middle School is known for taking anyone “who sleeps there” and for keeping students on its enrollment lists. But when students leave and come back into the school, it takes a long time for the records to follow so it can be difficult to determine students’ grade levels. There is little community involvement in the school.

Emery Middle School was placed on the Department of Education’s list of failing schools several years ago. Although an Empowerment Team was formed to restructure the school, students test scores have not improved. The Empowerment Team has hired a new principal — the fourth in six years — who is committed to improving student achievement. The new principal says that the school restructuring process has been slow and she anticipates additional changes.

The curriculum at Emery is weak. Seventh graders read at two to three years below grade level. There is no social studies curriculum in the elementary schools in this district, although the middle school is now teaching World Cultures. When the Emery teachers signed up for the seminar, they planned to use the information gained from the seminar as a springboard for writing a new social studies curriculum. They hoped that using Asia as a central theme would enliven the curriculum and help them improve student test scores. Since then, they have lost their common planning time. Some NCTA teachers plan to develop the new curriculum during the summer.

There is high turnover among students and administrators, but the teaching staff has shown resiliency and a commitment to each other and to their students. NCTA teacher Lisa Caballero describes herself as is a middle school teacher by choice. One NCTA participant says, “I love to teach, and when you do it here and have success, it’s probably unmatched anywhere else. That’s what keeps me going.”