This study examines two teaching styles in Chinese middle schools, traditional lecture-based and cooperative learning. The study uses simple descriptive statistics to analyze economic status and achievement scores for both strategies in four Chinese middle schools. There were 145 randomly selected middle school students involved in the study. The results showed that the participants in the traditional lecture-based group obtained higher achievement scores during the course of the semester. The paper concludes with some discussion about the application, implementation and recommendation of traditional and cooperative learning and their impact on educational leaders, school improvement, educational policy, and educational reforms. (Contains 3 tables and 1 chart.)