Inclusion & Equity
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Standard 1
School/program provides equitable opportunities for students to engage in high quality STEM learning.
Response: Stone Mountain Middle School hosts sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students on separate floors. Pre COVID, our entire student body has been just above 1000 students yearly in attendance. Of the 1000 students + approximately 70 - 80 participate in the STEM Program. All students regardless of income, receive 100% free of cost meal program (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019). Since the programs inception, the STEM Program has educated just over 300 students.
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Our population has remained concurrent, every year since the onset of the STEM program where the racial makeup being predominately African American., followed by Hispanic, Asian, White and Two or More Races. We also have a small population of American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander. While most students in the STEM Program are African American, an increasing number of students entering into the program are the underrepresented coming from various countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, and Yemen to name a few.
The STEM Program, including our pilot cohort 7th grade STEM class, contains a diverse population of students. Our diversified population includes but not limited to…Former Limited English Proficient, Gifted, African American, Asian, Hispanic, and White. Although the school tends to have more males than females, the STEM program avidly recruits the underrepresented in STEM beginning with gender, and has maintained throughout the program’s inception, a larger ratio of females to males within the program. See the chart - right for a current breakdown of race and gender. We recruit from our feeder schools: Hambrick, Stone Mill, Stone Mountain, and Rockbridge Elementary Schools. The line for recruitment is correspondence emailed to Grade 5 teachers, counselors, and principals of our feeder schools. The letter reads as follows:
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"I am reaching out to Grade 5 Teachers and Counselors as we begin the recruitment process for our STEM Program 2021-2022. Your help is greatly needed. Please see the attached correspondence.
This is time sensitive for we are in the process of building schedules. Please assist your selected students with the application and remit names to me by Friday, March 12, 2021. Use as a subject: STEM Recruitment 2021. "
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The correspondence will contain the following: A STEM Brochure, a Recruitment Letter, and our STEM Application.
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These documents are available to parents and distributed to them during our Rising Grade 6 meetings, Title I, meetings, Parent-Teacher Conferences, and during Orientation. These documents are also located on the school's website for easy access.
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Detailed Data: Stone Mountain Middle School
& STEM, Grades 6 - 8
Results: Stone Mountain frequently encourages the faculty to seek additional certification especially in the areas of ESOL and Gifted. As a result, having an ESOL endorsement allows for acquiring skills and experience to meet a language need and take the class to another level. Teachers plan projects, activities, and capstones that have a cultural spin. Content areas such as social studies, ELA, science, math, art in Connections classes help students to draw connections to the standards being taught. In addition, the STEM program has a cluster of Gifted students. These students have a variety of learning skills sets. Within this program, we have to keep our students engaged, tap into their multiple intelligences and engage them with clubs such as Drones, Coding, SeaPerch, Prosthetics, and LEGO Leagues.
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By design, the STEM faculty meets weekly as individual grade-level content areas and on teams. As a STEM Team, we collaborate monthly for vertical articulation within the STEM program. The main purpose for all meetings is to discuss content, brainstorm, monitor progress, identify problems, give feedback, and stress student-led practices. It is necessary that any STEM themed curricular provide rigor and incorporate the following: project-based learning, defined standards, and practices that expose students to real-world issues, help them to acquire 21st century essential workplace skills, and attain future-readiness for college and career. It is the culture of our school to examine data that seeks to improve the performance levels of both our students and staff.
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Whole Demographic School Data
Strengths: Students are part of a team with four core teachers who teach English Language Arts, math, science, and social studies. In addition to core content, the school offers exploratory classes such as art, band, technology, chorus, French immersion, Spanish, and business applications. The school operates as a school within a school as each grade level receives instructional support from administrators and/or Academic Coaches. Our teachers often take professional development offerings, and seek endorsements such as Gifted, and./or ESOL.. As a result, but not limited to, our students tend to advance academically year after year, in all content areas as displayed in the data analysis spreadsheet below:
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STEM Student Data
2017 - 2020
Sustainability: Continue with STEM literacy and data on students’ achievement of 21st century competencies when disaggregating results obtained by the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) and the norm-referenced Georgia Milestone test. Track STEM students’ assessments in the following ways:
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Formative assessments such as exit tickets, feedback, observations, and notebook checks
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Norm-referenced Tests – Measures of Academic Progress (MAP), and the Georgia Milestone
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Final projects/designs
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P.I.R.A.T.E. Engineering Design notebooks
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Standardized testing
With the inclusion of professional development, we will continue to develop quality in-field measurable methods of tracking our STEM students’ achievement of STEM literacy. As we bridge forward into mainstream fields in education through the STEM initiative, more measurable approaches will become more available. The following is a goal the STEM faculty will use at Stone Mountain Middle School to continue with the process of change. Knowing and understanding student data allow for cross-cutting lesson plans, and to build upon a deeper involvement for student projects. Lastly continue reaching out to our feeder schools drawing connections to work more cohesively.
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EM fields are growing and within the next 10 years will be a dominate factor in the workforce. Our students need to be able to compete in this global market therefore need to be exposed to those fields. The goal is, after being exposed to STEM fields of study, some of our students, if not most or all even, will become innovators in their communities. They will expand locally, and globally striving to make a cutting-edge difference. It is no doubt that there is a need to close STEM field gaps for the underrepresented – minorities, girls, and students schooled in poverty-stricken areas. Community engagement is a key component in making this happen. Through partnerships with NASA for example, assist us with transformative changes to our program that make it stronger. Collaborating has kept us STEM-focused and being STEM-focused has created a STEM culture. The STEM culture causes students to be innovative and STEM literate.
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Recommended: Two-project based STEM challenges implemented in grades 6-8 per semester or-
Two capstones per semester or-
One year-long capstone with additional PBLs implemented throughout the school year.
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Recommended: Students experience at least 3 cognitive project-based, interdisciplinary STEM projects in grade 6 - 8.
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Grades 6-8 incorporates real-world design projects into their curriculum that demonstrates an interdisciplinary focus.
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Recommended: There be at least a 5% increase in the number of students taking STEM related courses in Stone Mountain Middle School
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Main Milestones
EOG Spring 2018 & 2019 Grades 6-8
School Culture Data
