Center for Middle School Academic Achievement
Pat Seiber - Director
Phone: 270-809-6469
Email: cmsaa@coe.murraystate.edu
The Center for Middle School Academic Achievement (CMSAA) is supported by a grant from the Council on Postsecondary Education and the Kentucky Department of Education, and is jointly housed at Eastern Kentucky University and Murray State University. The purpose of this statewide collaborative project is to improve the subject knowledge and instructional practices of middle school teachers through the coordination of professional development programs, provision of technical assistance, and dissemination of information and research regarding effective teaching. The ultimate outcome of a successful program will be the enhanced academic performance of the middle school students throughout the state.
The Center for Middle School Academic Achievement is the lead organization of the Kentucky Schools to Watch initiative. The Center, partnering with the Kentucky Department of Education, The Collaborative for Teaching and Learning, The Kentucky Middle School Association and the Kentucky Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform, select schools that are high–performing, are academically excellent, developmentally responsive, socially equitable and have organizational structures and processes in place that support the school leaders and teachers. The goal of this program is not to create competition between Kentucky's middle schools, but to find schools to serve as models of academic excellence, developmental responsiveness, social equity, and organizational structures that sustain dynamic improvement and reform. The program is based on and follows the National Forum to Accelerate Middle Grades Reform Schools to Watch.
The Center will focus on three interrelated goals. These are to:
- Forge a collaborative Kentucky Middle School Forum that will involve teachers, teacher educators, principals, the Kentucky Department of Education, professional organizations, the Education Professional Standards Board, and the Council on Post Secondary Education in regional and state level planning that will drive the activities of the Center;
- Create a statewide system of Institutes for Middle School Teachers that provide professional development and graduate credit in content and research-based instructional strategies via convenient, easily accessible delivery systems and multiple instructional modalities; and
- Create a Kentucky Virtual Middle Schoolhouse, a web-based communications network by and for middle school teachers and educators that will disseminate best practices research, share teaching and learning strategies, and provide technical assistance.
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