As a nearly 70‐year‐old child advocacy organization, Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York, Inc. (CCC) strongly believes that middle schools in New York City need to be responsive to the developmental, social, and academic needs of their students so that students remain on track for high school graduation. To better ensure schools are achieving this goal, we believe it is critical to identify struggling students and intervene during the middle grades. The importance of keeping middle school students on track for high school is evident, as high school graduates fare better when compared to students who do not earn a high school diploma in terms of employment and earnings, and are less likely to live in poverty and experience other negative life outcomes than students who do not complete high school.

Recognizing that middle school students are at a unique developmental stage in their lives and in school settings that require of them greater responsibility and independent thinking, CCC wanted to examine promising methods to identify students at risk of falling off track as well as interventions to address risk and improve student outcomes.

It is commonly understood that the middle grades, generally ages 11‐14, are a period of significant transition for children. During this time, young adolescents are undergoing the physical changes that accompany puberty. At the same time, they are experiencing social and emotional changes, such as the increased importance of peers and a growing desire for independence. Students at this age are beginning to explore their identities more deeply and to think more abstractly.

Additionally, middle schools generally require more academic and personal responsibility from their students than elementary schools do. Nationally and locally, the education system has shifted away from K‐8 and K‐12 schools and toward separate middle schools that often serve grades 6‐8. Consequently, for many students, entering sixth grade means starting at a new school with new classmates, new teachers, and new learning structures. The middle grades are often the time at which students begin changing classes and having different subject teachers (after generally staying in the same classroom all day in elementary school).

Academically, the middle school years are critical to children’s future success, as they lay the foundation for achievement in high school. Unfortunately, for some children, middle school can be the time when they begin to disengage from school, putting them at risk of eventually dropping out. As a result, the middle grades are a crucial time for identifying struggling students and intervening appropriately so that students stay on or get back on track.

Our review of the literature and interviews with education experts shed light on many promising practices in risk identification and methods of intervention. Our findings show, for example, that a few key student‐specific indicators, including attendance, behavior, and course performance, can help to determine which students are at risk for falling off track. Further, a school’s climate and the capacity of the school to respond to students’ needs also play important roles in setting students up for success. Schools that have systems in place to identify struggling students and intervene appear to use student data strategically to inform resource allocation, instructional approaches, staffing patterns, and linkages with community‐based organizations. Focusing on youth development, safety, and professional development for teachers that includes early adolescent development also appears to be important in assisting middle schools to provide critical support to students. Rather than approaches to discipline that remove students from the classroom, such as suspensions, behavioral supports for students and approaches that keep students in school are also critically important to sustaining student engagement. In addition, the experts with whom CCC met told us that greater access to student data and the ability to follow students’ progress through the school system would better enable schools to identify struggling students and assess the effectiveness of interventions.

It is important to note that struggling students are not all the same, nor do they all follow the same path. Signs of academic struggles and patterns of disengagement may surface at different times during the middle grades. Both the research and our interviews underscore the fact that strategies to identify risk and to intervene should be differentiated to meet students’ needs and monitored to assess effectiveness. Furthermore, while some interventions are tailored to individual students, other promising approaches to intervention are delivered in small groups or as school‐wide prevention strategies.

As noted earlier, CCC believes the New York City and State school systems have a responsibility to identify struggling students, provide necessary support, and create conditions for all students to succeed in the middle grades so they can enter high school on track for graduation. We hope that this briefing paper will be informative for schools, networks, after‐school providers, and our local elected officials.