Metro’s Struggling Students Pulled For Intervention

Middle Schools in Nashville are reconfiguring their school day to help kids struggling with math and reading.

Schools must find about an hour every day for the extra instruction. To find that time, students have to give up some of their other classes, at least for a little awhile.

Teacher: “Tell me what the setting of your story is.”
Student: “An island?”
Teacher: “An island. Awesome. Anything special about that island?”

A group of five sixth-graders at Wright Middle School is sitting in a half circle with a paperback book. A teacher looks each in the eye quizzing them on the place, plot, and characters. In a room downstairs, the focus is math.

These intervention classes, as they’re called, just started a couple weeks ago, and each school has to figure out how to fit them in.

Wright Middle is pulling students who aren’t testing well from their art, music or P.E. classes.

Sue Anderson is the school’s math instructional coach. She says it wasn’t an easy decision because every subject is important.

“But if they can’t read, or they can’t do basic functions in math, then the related arts is going to be something we’ll have to go, we’re going to have to weigh and say, ‘which one do we consider is more important for that child’s success?’”

At Wright Middle, students will get reassessed every nine weeks to determine whether they need to stay in the extra class.

Middle School students are being targeted for intervention due to last year’s shift to tougher academic standards. Fifth through eighth grades saw some of the most dramatic increases in what kids are expected to know.