The ninth-grade gap. The middle school malaise. The summer slide.
When students in the region's five counties reach middle school, their academic achievement plummets. Children who excelled in elementary school transform into below-average readers by 10th grade.
The development is no stranger to Southwest Florida educators. Just 38 percent of Lee County sophomores, for instance, met the state's reading standard last year. It was 27 percent in Glades and Hendry counties, respectively. That's a significant turnaround from the elementary years when 70 percent of Charlotte, Lee and Glades students were passing.
Educators say there are many causes for the dropoff, including students reaching puberty and developing other interests and also a lack of structure at the middle-school level. The summer slide, the idea of lower-income students losing out on learning gains during the school-free summer months, also plays a role.
A Duke University study found that students lose about a month of progress in math skills each summer, while low-income students slip as many as three months in reading comprehension. Wealthier parents tend to keep students engaged and reading over the summer.
Extending the school year, creating middle school career and technical academies, and assigning individual mentors are some ways local education officials hope to close the ninth-grade gap. Extending the school year - Southwest Florida students go to class for 180 days of the year - has worked in other communities. School districts that extended the school year by eight weeks have seen a 40 percent to 50 percent achievement gain over three years from their students.
Lee County hasn't attempted extending the school year, but Parkside Elementary School in Naples Manor launched a pilot program this year that required the students to go to school an extra eight weeks. Parkside needs its students to have more time in the classroom. Of Parkside's 838 students, two out of three are eligible for the English Language Learners program, which teaches English to students who grew up speaking a different language.
Glades County schools, the state's fourth-smallest district with 1,439 students, lept from a C to an A because it found a way to improve the FCAT scores of its middle schoolers.
At Moore Haven Junior-Senior High, for instance, the school created a mentorship program called "Terrier Time," named after the school's mascot. Each student was given a list of the entire faculty and staff, from bus drivers to the principal, and told to pick someone to be a mentor.
Every teacher offered before and after school tutoring. The school developed a strategy of tempting parents with free food to get them engaged.
Career academies are another way to hook students at an earlier age. Career academies are small, personalized learning communities within a high school that select a subset of students and teachers for a two-, three- or four-year span.
"The career academies could help (at middle schools) because it allows students to apply the academics to the real world," said Sue Roshon, Lee's technical education director. "Research clearly shows that when students get to do something, they have a better chance of retaining it."
Earlier this year, the state Legislature passed a law that required all school districts to open at least one middle school career academy by 2012. Legislators wanted students to start thinking about their future careers at an earlier age.
Lee has 22 high school career academies, ranging from digital design to economics.
The state used to have students declare a major by the eighth grade, but it has recently stepped back from that requirement.
"The whole role of middle school is to give kids a general foundation and let them have experience in different things," Trafalgar Middle School Principal Angela Pruitt said.
Marshall Bower, director of the Foundation for Lee County Public Schools, disagreed.
"In China and in India and in other places that are moving ahead of us, students are starting to think about what they want to do for a career in elementary school," Bower said. "I'm not saying we need to stifle kids and tell them to pick something in the fifth grade, but we need a paradigm shift where kids start thinking about careers at an early age."