“I really hope I can come back year after year after year and year to come, and maybe when I’m old enough, I can work as a staff member that helps out the students here for the summer. I really like it here.”
Our Success
Middle Grades Partnership increases opportunities for academically promising Baltimore City public middle school students through public and private school partnerships.
Since 2005, Middle Grades Partnership has served more than 6,500 Baltimore City middle school students.
In 2026, Middle Grades Partnership provided 150 hours of summer programming for 282 students in public and private school partnerships.
Of all MGP students, 53% identified as African American/Black, 4% as Asian, 11% as Bi/Multi-Racial, 13% as Caucasian/White, 14% as Latino, <1% as Middle Eastern, 1% as Pacific Islander, 1% as Other, and 2% preferred not to say. Female students comprised 55% of our students, while 44% were male, and 1% were non-binary. 87% of the students were eligible for free meals.
Our daily attendance rate was 95%, meeting the benchmark for excellence in summer programming. Even more compelling? The majority of our students have to get up early enough to catch a public bus to their home school prior to boarding the bus to the partner school.
This summer, 40% of our students were returning from the previous year, while 60% were new.
This year, 86% of Middle Grades Partnership’s rising ninth graders were accepted into citywide academic entrance-criteria public high schools (City, Poly, Western, and Dunbar), as well as Baltimore School for the Arts, Bard Early College, parochial, or private schools.
This is even more extraordinary because Middle Grades Partnership recruits often-overlooked students who are academically in the middle, not those identified as high-achieving before entering the Middle Grades Partnership.
Note that the last published citywide average for student acceptance into the top academic-criteria public high schools was 26%.