Transforming teaching and learning so all students succeed.
Why is it needed?
The middle school years set the stage for students to take ownership of their learning and academic futures. Yet, far too many middle school students are achieving below grade level and fail to catch up with their peers. Students who are already struggling and reach middle school – with eight new classes, eight different teachers, lockers, and hormones – often find it impossible to catch up. RAISEup Texas provides individualized, integrated interventions to help these students accelerate to at or above grade level and catch back up with their peers.
Even those middle school students who are “coasting along” with B averages often do quite well at rote memorization but fail to develop the conceptual learning and critical thinking skills needed to be high school, college and career ready. Data shows that passing rates in middle school drop, disciplinary rates skyrocket and students often start to mentally “drop out” of the academic process.
RAISEup Texas provides support for a whole-school transformation process that addresses these struggles. At elementary and middle school levels, we provide leadership coaching, professional learning, and support for the development of systems and collective efforts that, at once, improve both campus culture and classroom learning. A focus on *content literacy, facilitated by frequent, simultaneous practice across all classrooms of a common set of instructional tools, serves as a foundational instructional framework that elevates the practice of meeting the needs of all learners. Systems for identifying struggling readers, developing interventions to meet their needs, and aligning instructional practices also serve to increase student achievement.
*Content literacy is defined as fluent use of the listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, and strategies needed to learn in each of the academic disciplines. (Lenz & Ehren,1999)