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Story posted March 26, 2009. Results updated April 23, 2013

Results:
• In 2012, the school outperformed the state in reading at every grade level, despite serving a significantly higher proportion of free/reduced-price lunch students [they performed nearly as well, or as well, in math at every grade level]

Everyone loves a Cinderella story. When Newport Mill Middle School opened its doors in 2002, folks wondered how students would fare. The school is located in the section of Montgomery County, Maryland, that is most affected by poverty, mobility, and language diversity. The verdict is in: One of the highest-performing middle schools in the county, Newport Mill has demonstrated the remarkable power of the Spirit of Excellence.

Tiger Pride: Fueling the Character Education Initiative
An important aspect of the school’s success is its emphasis on character education. From the beginning, Tiger Pride—with its emphasis on the five traits of respect, responsibility, caring, sportsmanship, and effort—has been the slogan that fuels Newport Mill. Since middle schools can easily fall prey to low test scores, concerns about student behavior, and a lack of connection among stakeholders, the new school developed a comprehensive program to address these issues. Three motivational messages, which are prominently displayed in the school, epitomize its positive philosophy: This is important, You can do it, and I won’t give up on you.

Staff members are so committed to the philosophy of “not giving up” on their students that they call many students in the morning before school to encourage them to attend. To accommodate parents with early-shift work, a school employee supervises students who arrive at the building at 6:15 a.m.

Newport Mill’s dedication to, and success with, character education is widely known. The Character Education Partnership selected the school as a 2006-2007 National School of Character winner. In October 2008, Maryland’s state superintendent chose to announce the publication of an important new book at Newport Mill. The book, “Character Education by Design: A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives,” was developed by Maryland educators, including two Newport Mill staff members.

Building on the Baldrige Framework
In 2003 the school implemented the Baldrige School Improvement process, which emphasizes student-centered education, openness to all voices, and performance data to guide improvement. In that spirit, when student surveys indicated that teasing was a problem at Newport Mill, the school went into action. The counselors devised a creative “How to Be an Ally” program of structured lessons on bullying and teasing. All teachers receive training on these lessons, which they in turn teach to the entire student body in small classes. Listening to the student voice helped resolve the issue, with current surveys indicating that bullying and teasing have greatly decreased.

The Baldrige model also recognizes the importance of a collaborative professional environment in helping students learn. To ensure such an environment at their school, teachers and staff at Newport Mill are participating in a Montgomery County Schools’ Professional Learning Community Institute, which examines how school staff members work together.

Newport Mill is continually looking for ways to improve, with teachers and staff constantly reviewing their current practices and reflecting on them. The leadership team is currently working with facilitators to examine case studies on successful schools for best practices they can borrow.

The school is also participating in the district’s middle school reform initiative. To support that initiative’s focus on rigor for the adolescent learner, Newport Mill is now phasing in “expansion courses” for 6th and 7th graders. These courses are the first step in a sequence that will ultimately allow students to take classes for high school credit when they are in 8th grade.

A Challenging Academic Curriculum
Although Newport Mill emphasizes caring, it does not compromise the student’s responsibility to excel academically. A class at Newport Mill is a stimulating adventure in learning. Worksheets and busy work are absent in these energetic classrooms; in their stead are thought-provoking lessons in which students accept exciting challenges and explore new ideas. For example, a social studies class might consider explorers from the perspective of both the conqueror and the conquered, or an English class might speculate on what a poem would say if it were written from a different viewpoint.

To meet the diverse learning styles of their students, teachers employ a variety of instructional strategies, including cooperative learning, small-group activities, individual and group projects, and literary circles.

The school is an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School offering the Middle Years Programme (MYP). The IB is an internationally recognized curriculum and educational program that stresses rigorous standards and aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and articulate global citizens. At Newport Mill, this program focuses on five areas of interaction—“health and social education,” “community and service,” “approaches to learning,” “environments,” and “human ingenuity”—in which students connect with themselves, their environment, and the greater world around them. As a part of this program, 8th grade students complete a capstone project that demonstrates the skills they have learned during their MYP years.

An important component of this project is service-learning. Students and staff volunteer at local parks to remove invasive plants, collect seeds, and pick up litter. This experience and the academic class work surrounding it helps students develop the skills required to produce an extended piece of work and engage in personal action and reflection on specific topics and issues. In addition, it helps students build knowledge of what it means to be active, caring young people.

Newport Mill has done remarkable work in narrowing the “achievement gap.” Since earlier test score data indicated a weakness in mathematics, students in Math 6, Math 7, Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry take a 90-minute math class daily. 74 percent of all current eighth graders are taking either Algebra 1 or an even higher-level math course. Impressively, minority enrollment mirrors this trend: 86 percent of African-Americans and 62 percent of Hispanics take algebra or higher math.

Not only do students at Newport Mill tend to take more difficult courses, they are successful in them. Standardized test scores have risen dramatically over the past four years, both school-wide and among minority students. And in 2008 African-Americans as a group scored above the school average in 6th and 7th grade reading, 6th and 7th grade math, and 8th grade reading.

Connecting School to Families in Novel Ways
Newport Mill’s goal of connecting to families is evident in the high level of communication with parents, including daily e-mail messages that contain the school’s morning announcements and Sunday night phone calls outlining the activities of the week to come. All communications are issued in English and Spanish, and are translated into other languages when necessary.

Newport Mill also prides itself on listening to the concerns of its parents. For example, when parents indicated that they needed babysitting services to get to meetings, the school provided such a service; when parents said they needed dinner, it furnished food.

Staff and parents listen to each other, and the administration regards feedback as a positive guide, not as criticism. “The level of communication flows easily,” states Kitty Hollister, former PTA president. “The school is responsive to parent concerns in many ways.” When feedback indicated the need for parenting workshops, the school created the Parent Empowerment Program. This program holds monthly workshops on a diverse range of topics—everything from techniques for responsible parenting to handling peer pressure and transitioning to high school.

Currently, the school is working particularly hard to reach out to African-American and Latino families. Newport Mill is working with Montgomery County’s Division of Community Partnership in developing an approach to best foster those relationships. One current strategy is a school-wide parent night that walks participants through the process of providing thoughts and feedback to the school to help support high student achievement.

Next Steps for Newport Mill
With an eye on developing service learning, the school intends to emphasize projects that help the oppressed, including those in other countries. Last year, a student-directed project sent 25 boxes of goods to the needy in Swaziland. This year, students are raising money to purchase stoves to send to women in Sudan. Teachers are already talking about other projects that reinforce the curriculum while promoting social justice and training students to be activists.

Newport Mill has taken giant strides in meeting the academic, emotional, social, and personal needs of its diverse student body. By expanding its Character Education Committee to include more students, parents, and community members, the school hopes to widen its support base. It also hopes to serve as a model school—a school that exemplifies what can be done when you believe in students and teach them to believe in themselves.

JULY 2010 UPDATE: Newport Mill has continued to perform higher than its demographics would predict. In 2010, the school bettered the state proficiency rates in reading at all grade levels and in 8th grade math, while scoring around the state average in 6th and 7th grade math. As elsewhere, the challenge of the achievement gap remains; however, 8th grade African-American students bettered the school and state proficiency rates in both math and science.

For additional information, please contact:
Penny Tsonis
Principal, Newport Mill Middle School
Panagiota_K_Tsonis@mcpsmd.org 
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/newportmillms/ 

This story came to LFA's attention after being honored by the Character Education Partnership as a 2007 National School of Character.

Adapted and updated with permission from the Character Education Partnership.

Full citation:
"A Cinderella Story: The Spirit of Excellence," by the Character Education Partnership.  In the 2007 National Schools of Character Award Winning Practices book.

Copyright © 2007 Character Education Partnership.

Click here to access the original article as contained in the 2007 National Schools of Character Award Winning Practices book.