![\"\"](\"https:\/\/readytango.com\/clients\/strive-together\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Middle-school.jpg\")
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The #ImpactAgent campaign celebrates people and organizations who have changed the way they do business every day, based on data, to improve the lives of students from cradle to career.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Matt Pope wanted to make his parents happy and become a lawyer. But after finishing his undergraduate studies at Texas State, he got a temporary job tutoring elementary school kids in an at-risk school in South Texas. Almost instantly, Matt was hooked on a new career. He was soon enrolled at the University of Houston to get a teaching certificate and ultimately a master\u2019s degree in education.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized I loved the kids and I wanted to be able to change people\u2019s outcomes before they needed a lawyer,\u201d says Pope.<\/p>\n Today, Pope, 33, is changing outcomes for kids throughout Central Texas as senior program director of RAISEup Texas<\/a>, an initiative that is transforming teaching and learning in area middle schools. It\u2019s a job he took after teaching math for a few years and later becoming principal of Simon Middle School in the city of Kyle. The school was one of six participating in a RAISEup Texas demonstration project led by E3 Alliance<\/a>, a data-driven education partnership based in Austin and a nationally recognized collective impact model.<\/p>\n Under Pope\u2019s leadership and with RAISEup\u00a0Texas\u2019s support, Simon Middle School went from being on the state watch list for underperformance to ranking in the top 25 percent of middle schools in the state in closing performance gaps for struggling students. Among many accolades, the school was named a \u201c2014 National School to Watch\u201d by the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform.<\/a><\/p>\n The accolades and the improvements in student performance are all the more impressive considering that Simon Middle School serves a high concentration of struggling students; more than 90 percent receive free and reduced-price lunch and nearly half are English-language learners. No matter their background, students who come to school hungry lack the energy and focus required to concentrate in the classroom. Inspired by the results his school achieved with the support of\u00a0\u00a0RAISEup\u00a0Texas, Pope responded enthusiastically when he was approached by E3 Alliance about leading a region-wide expansion of the program.<\/p>\n \u201cMy career has been about continually moving into positions where I could impact more and more children,\u201d he says. \u201cAt Simon I could help 600 students succeed. With\u00a0\u00a0RAISEup\u00a0Texas, we could change outcomes 28,000 students over the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n But the middle school years increasingly are recognized as an equally critical time in a child\u2019s development. These are years when students begin to take ownership of their learning and their academic future. According to a 2008 report by the college admissions testing company ACT<\/a>, \u201cThe level of academic achievement that students attain by eighth grade has a larger impact on their college and career readiness by the time they graduate from high school than anything that happens academically in high school.\u201d<\/p>\n Sadly, the middle school years also are years when far too many students start falling through the cracks. In a reflection of national data, research by\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0found that passing rates on standardized tests among Central Texas students dropped by 20 percentage points between fifth and ninth grade, and student disciplinary referrals tripled between fifth and sixth grade.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe data showed what a lot of people already believed to be true: the middle school years weren\u2019t working for our students,\u201d says Susan Dawson, president and executive director of E3 Alliance.<\/p>\n It was this belief \u2014 and the data behind it \u2014 that prompted E3 Alliance to seek a grant through the U.S. Department of Education\u2019s Investing in Innovation (i3) program for a large-scale effort to transform teaching and learning in middle schools in the region. Although its proposal placed in the top 5 percent of nearly 1,700 submitted nationwide, E3 Alliance did not win the grant. Determined to move forward nonetheless, E3 Alliance launched RAISEup\u00a0Texas\u00a0as a three-and-a-half year demonstration project starting in January 2011. The focus: implementing an evidence-based model for \u201cwhole-school transformation\u201d in six middle schools serving 13,000 students.<\/p>\n During the first year of the demonstration, administrators and teachers at Simon Middle School struggled. \u201cHonestly, we didn\u2019t know quite what we were doing, and people were frustrated that this was just one more initiative they had to pay attention to on top of everything else,\u201d Pope says.<\/p>\n But Pope was undaunted. When he was promoted to principal at the end of that year, he decided that the school needed to, as he puts it, \u201cgo all in.\u201d This meant transforming existing structures and systems at the school so everything was designed to support the SIM model to succeed. Pope built dedicated time into the school day for teachers and staff to meet with each other to share what\u2019s working and what\u2019s not, and also to meet with the instructional coach provided to each school by\u00a0\u00a0RAISEup\u00a0Texas. And he doubled down on a process called \u201cSMARTER Planning\u201d so that teachers could map critical content, evaluate student learning and adjust strategies based on different students\u2019 needs.<\/p>\n After Simon Middle School made a deeper commitment to the work, Pope and his colleagues began to see a change. \u201cThings started to click as we got into that second year,\u201d Pope recalls. \u201cYou started to see teachers feeling more ready to teach and students gaining more confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n Before long, the data began to back up what Pope was seeing every day. Simon Middle School went from having the worst attendance numbers in the district to having the best. Student disciplinary referrals started to decline. The results were especially striking for struggling students who attended the new \u201cLearning Strategies\u201d classes that are part of the SIM model. Three out of five of these students (60 percent) moved to grade level in one year, making two to three years of gains in nine months.<\/p>\n The results at Simon Middle School were echoed at the other schools in the\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0demonstration. The Texas state accountability system for schools includes an \u201cIndex 3\u201d distinction for campuses that demonstrate they are closing performance gaps across different demographic groups. Among all central Texas middle schools, the proportion receiving this distinction in 2014 was one in four (25 percent). Among the\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0demonstration schools, it was 75 percent.\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0research showed that students in the six schools registered 10 times as many point gains on standardized tests compared to peers across the country who started at the same level.<\/p>\n With evidence in hand that the demonstration project created impressive results for schools and students,\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas, now under Pope\u2019s leadership, developed a business plan for expanding the work to more schools in the region. Eight new schools began the three-and-a-half year journey in the spring of 2015, and another cohort of schools launched in the spring of 2016. Over the next five years, Pope says\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0will reach an additional 28,000 students through these two cohorts, and 1,100 teachers will gain powerful skills they can use to benefit students for decades.<\/p>\n As\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0writes the next chapter in its path to large-scale impact, it is applying lessons learned during its early work with Simon Middle School and the other five demonstration schools. Having seen the impact that the SIM model can have in improving outcomes for struggling learners, the expansion is focused on schools with large populations of struggling learners. The expansion also relies on a shared funding model where\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u2019s private investors cover 100 percent of the early costs, but school districts then start picking up more and more of the costs over time until the changes are fully sustained with public funding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to see schools and districts really buy into this over time so it becomes sustainable and an accepted way of operating. The expansion is designed to make that happen,\u201d says Pope.<\/p>\n RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas\u00a0also has been very deliberate about selecting schools for the expansion where it feels leaders and teachers are ready to take on the challenge of whole-school transformation. \u201cNot every school is going to embrace this. You are talking about massive change for everyone in the building,\u201d says Pope. In its negotiations with participating schools, E3 Alliance has district leaders and school principals sign a 20-page agreement spelling out expectations and the logic model for the program.<\/p>\n \u201cI know what it\u2019s like to make this commitment. I\u2019ve been there so I want to make sure people understand what it takes,\u201d says Pope.<\/p>\n But Pope also wants people to understand the rewards that come from transforming teaching and learning for students in their middle school years. \u201cThere is nothing better than seeing your work result in real changes in kids\u2019 lives,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas is an initiative of E3 Alliance, a StriveTogether Cradle to Career Network<\/a> member and a nationally recognized nonprofit located in Austin, Texas. \u00a0Founded in 2006, E3 Alliance<\/a> is working to build the strongest educational pipeline in the country to drive regional economic prosperity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Former middle school principal Matt Pope is leading an effort to transform teaching and learning \u2014 and improve student outcomes \u2014 in Central Texas middle schools. The #ImpactAgent campaign celebrates people and organizations who have changed the way they do business every day, based on data, to improve the lives of students from cradle to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":8034,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":""},"class_list":["post-9066","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","description-off"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy middle school?<\/h3>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/readytango.com\/clients\/strive-together\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Middle-school-1.jpg\")
In national conversations about improving education and getting better results for all kids, the middle school years often get ignored. Education experts, government officials, businesses and investors pay a lot of attention to the outside ends of the cradle-to-career continuum, avoiding some of the tough challenges involving schools, teaching and learning. There is growing investment in and attention to the importance of quality preschool so kids are ready to learn when they start kindergarten. At the other end, school districts are exploring a range of evidence-based strategies for creating clearer pathways from high school to college and careers.<\/p>\nGoing ‘all in’ on school change<\/h3>\n
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When the RAISEup<\/sup><\/em> Texas demonstration project launched, Matt Pope was assistant principal at Simon Middle School, located along the bustling I-35 corridor between San Antonio and Austin. In Simon and the other five schools,\u00a0RAISEup<\/sup>\u00a0<\/em>Texas\u00a0set out to work with teachers and staff to apply the Strategic Instruction Model<\/a> (SIM) developed by the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning. Through intense, multi-year professional development and coaching for teachers, SIM provides powerful teaching tools and strategies for supporting students to develop content literacy across all of their classes.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/readytango.com\/clients\/strive-together\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/Middle-school-3.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMoving to scale<\/h3>\n
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<\/p>\nPartnering for success<\/h3>\n