Improving Urban Middle Schools

L. Mickey Fenzel is Professor and Chair of Teacher Education at Loyola College in Maryland.

• AcknowledgmentsForwardIntroduction 1. The Current State of Urban Middle Schools 2. The Nativity School Model 3. Nativity School Structures and Programs 4. Academic Success 5. Social, Emotional, Spiritual, and Physical Development 6. Instruction and Instructional Quality in Nativity Schools 7. Costs, Funding, and Governance 8. Summary of Findings, Conclusions, and Implications Appendix A: The Schools, Their Students, and Their TeachersAppendix B: Procedures and InstrumentsAppendix C: Attendance Rates and Standardized Test Results for Individual SchoolsAppendix D: Comparison of Means of Student Self-Perceptions and Perceptions of Environment for Eight Nativity and Two Traditional Parochial SchoolsNotesReferencesIndex

"…a strong case for the effectiveness of the Nativity schools model." — CHOICE"This book addresses an overlooked topic in school reform. It will be beneficial to a number of audiences, including charter and small school research. Obviously, the author has spent an enormous amount of time studying these schools and the research presented in this book will be an asset to many aspects of educational research." — Steven B. Mertens, coeditor of The Young Adolescent and the Middle School