1. Raise student achievement by making core instruction core to the schedule.

More time on core instruction leads to greater mastery. However, middle schoolers often get fewer minutes of math and literacy than they did in elementary school—and less than they will again in high school. In addition, planning and collaboration time for grade-level teachers is often focused on student behaviors, classroom routines, and school culture—issues only adjacent to delivering high-quality core instruction. Far fewer middle schools prioritize daily, content-specific planning time for teachers to collaborate with their core content peers and discuss curriculum, lesson plans, and ways to maximize the impact of Tier 1 instruction.

Ample research makes it clear that no schedule model is best, and no schedule by itself will improve student achievement. What can sink student achievement, however, is a lack of time devoted to high-quality instruction. Achievement gains start with making core instruction the non-negotiable center of middle school design.

2. Help students who struggle (with and without disabilities) catch up by offering content-specific intervention classes

In the traditional model, middle schools struggle to carve out time for best practice intervention, leaving students who struggle with limited support. Flex or WIN blocks, unfortunately, do not achieve the structure, consistency, and clear expectations needed for intervention to be effective.

The better route is to structure academic intervention like any other subject being taught as a class. Research is clear that gap-closing middle schools provide academic intervention for math, reading, and writing for students who need it via extra-time, content-specific classes scheduled into the day.

3. Boost student emotional well-being by limiting unstructured time and adding behavioral expertise.

Academic progress for middle schoolers rests on emotional and social foundations. However, despite enormous efforts and focus on the part of middle schools, many students still regularly report feeling anxious or exhibit signs of dysregulation.

Middle schools can work to ensure the social-emotional safety of their students by reducing or removing unstructured time wherever possible, adding a high level of structure to any remaining unstructured time, and proactively addressing problematic behavior with expertise.

4. Enhance student engagement through meaningful voice and choice and by leaning into student passions.

Student engagement is one of the strongest predictors of whether students attend school regularly, participate in class, and succeed academically. Unfortunately, the traditional middle school model often undermines engagement by not providing students with meaningful enough voice and choice.

To build and enhance student engagement, middle schools should prioritize providing a rich set of exploratory and elective classes that tap into student interests, and over which students have some degree of choice in selecting. Even better is to also offer honors or accelerated sections for students in select core subjects to ensure students who crave a higher level of rigor receive it.

5. Operate middle schools more cost-effectively by using more flexible teaming and staffing approaches.

The bedrock of historical middle school design is that core teachers typically teach only one grade level and one subject, which significantly reduces a school’s ability to shift teaching and staffing assignments in response to changes in student enrollment. On top of this, middle school core teachers typically spend the least amount of the school day teaching content relative to their elementary and high school level counterparts. Translated, this means middle schools that use the traditional teaming model are very expensive, often requiring overstaffing relative to enrollment or services to be reduced in times of tight finances.

Middle schools can gain flexibility without giving up the benefits of teaming by using different staffing models, such as having teachers cover multiple grades or subjects, or mixing students across teams for certain classes. These approaches lower costs and make it easier to adjust when enrollment shifts. Schools can also make better use of teachers’ “extra” periods by assigning them to teach an additional content class, offer an elective, or lead targeted intervention classes. Together, these strategies can give middle schools much more flexibility in adapting to shifting enrollment, and even make new or different schedule approaches possible.