The purpose of this literature and field review is to understand previous efforts at scaling up performance assessments for use across districts and states. Performance assessments benefit students and teachers by providing more opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and complex skills, by providing teachers with better…

Turning Points is a New American Schools design for comprehensive middle school reform coordinated by the Center for Collaborative Education (CCE) in Boston Massachusetts. It focuses on creating a professional collaborative culture and using data-based inquiry to improve teaching and learning for all students. Turning Points seeks to create…

The purpose of this guide is to provide a middle school literacy model, to describe practices and strategies of literacy education, and to assist school communities as they implement a balanced Turning Points literacy program that is responsive to the particular needs of middle school students. This guide includes: (1) the rationale for a Turning…

All schools need to constantly reflect on the quality of their work and the progress and achievements that they make over time. The primary goal of an accountability system is to help schools improve through critical self-reflection. It enables students, teachers, and other members of the school community to evaluate their practices, especially…

The educational needs of middle school students are truly unique. In no other period of PreK-12 education can one find such a wide range of physical, social, and cognitive development among students. For students, the middle school years can be a time of both great vulnerability and great responsiveness to change. These years are highly formative…