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Pickle in the Middle
James A. Beane
Published in California English, Sacramento: California Association of Teachers of English, September 2006.
In that moment of shock and surprise, I suddenly realized what the Jim Carrey character in The Truman Show must have felt when faced with the possibility that his life to the moment had been a fiction.
It is September, 2005. I have been invited to respond to the Mayhem in the Middle report at its National Press Club release. As I sit waiting my turn to speak, Cheri Yecke describes what she claims are the history and goals of the middle school concept. It is she says a lost cause dreamed up by misguided progressives, a bankrupt idea based on anti-academic ideas that leave America’s young adolescents far behind their international peers. A failure on all accounts.
Where had I been for the past 40 years? I would have sworn a major portion of my career had been spent working with middle schools determined to give more young adolescents more access to more knowledge, organize themselves to support quality relationships between and among teachers and students, generally get past the junior version of the high school that Charles Silberman had described in 1970 as the “cesspool of American education.” True, not all schools that called themselves “middle schools” had been sincere, diligent, or successful in these ways. In fact, most had sooner or later struggled under the usual obstacles to school reform – outmoded bureaucratic regulations, inappropriate external curriculum mandates, poor leadership, staff inertia, lack of funding, and so on. But they tried. And when it all worked, the results were wonderful. So what was Cheri Yecke talking about? Did I simply imagine all this? Or was Yecke playing mind games?
The Middle School Concept
The middle school “concept” is not dead. In fact, the concept is more alive than ever as study after study shows that when it is implemented well over a period of time, students achieve significant increases in academic achievement and significant decreases in behavior problems. And therein lies the real problem with the middle school concept: it has not been well implemented over a period of time. More often, the title of “middle school” has less to do with the concept and more to do with changing the name in front of the school and the letterhead on the school stationery.
For the record, just what is this middle school concept? Most middle level educators refer to two sources for a definition: the Carnegie Council’s 1989 report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century, and the National Middle School Association’s policy statement, This We Believe: Successful Schools for Young Adolescents, most recently revised in 2003. These two statements offer a set of guidelines and priorities for high quality middle level schools, including improved academic achievement for all students, a challenging and engaging curriculum, supportive and safe environments, better teacher preparation, and improved relationships with families and communities. And, for the record, both recognize that schools for young adolescents can be found inside a variety of grade configurations including 6-8, 5-8, 7-8, K-8, 7-12, K-12, and more.
As interest in middle level education has grown, it has also been the subject of considerable research. Between 1991 and 2003, over 3,700 studies related to middle schools were published (Hough, 2003). A number have looked at what happens when the components of the middle school concept have been implemented as a complete set, over time, and with high fidelity (DePascale, 1997; Felner et al., 1997) The results: increases in academic achievement and decreases in behavior problems. Moreover, various components within the middle concept have shown considerable promise on their own (Beane & Brodhagen, 2002; Juvonen, Kaganoff, Augustine, & Constant, 2004; Research Committee, 2003). For example, when teachers work in small teams rather than as individual specialists, students report better teacher-student relationships and higher levels of commitment to their schools. Likewise, use of varied activities and integrative units are both associated with higher levels of academic achievement.
The Fuss Over Grade Levels
The grade 5-8 and 6-8 configurations widely used at the middle level emerged early on mainly as a result of overcrowding in elementary schools (as the Baby Boomers came through them in the 1960s and early 70s). In southern states, the 5-8 configuration also helped to more quickly move students out of segregated neighborhood K-8 schools into more integrated middle or intermediate schools. Advocates for reform at the middle level did argue for aspects of the middle school concept, but those arguments alone would not have produced the wide-scale move to middle schools without the presence of factors like overcrowding and desegregation.
However, proponents of the middle school concept have long cautioned not to equate the middle school concept with grade configurations. For example, almost 20 years ago Paul George (1988, p.17) suggested that “slavish adherence to one grade configuration or another continues to obscure the need for substantive change and draws our attention away from potentially viable alternatives such as K-8 and K-12.” In the early 1990s Lounsbury and Clark (1991) found that eighth graders in K-8 schools reported more favorable experiences than those in 6-8 schools. The widely cited Philadelphia study (Offenberg, 2001) showing better achievement in K-8 schools than in middle schools was actually published in the Middle School Journal. And a recent issue of that journal (September, 2005) is almost entirely devoted to research and policy questions related to K-8 schools.
Some researchers have suggested the move to K-8 schools in larger urban areas around the country appears to offer some academic benefits to students involved. But, as always, we must be cautious not to attribute these benefits to simply changing the grades. Those same researchers have suggested that the improved achievement is most likely a result of (1) the relationships among teachers, students, and parents that are possible in smaller K-8 schools and (2) students not having to transition to a new school for the middle grades (for example, Balfanz, Spiridakis, & Neild, 2002; Offenberg, 2001; Simmons & Blyth, 1987). In fact, it may be that the problem of transitions accounts for the fact that the achievement advantages of students in small K-8 centers over those in large 6-8 schools in Miami-Dade begin to erode in the eighth grade and essentially disappear in the ninth (Abella, 2005).
Facing Reality
As the record of middle schools themselves shows, simply changing the grade configurations is not sufficient to improve education for young adolescents. The question we need to answer is, “what kind of education should we provide for young adolescents wherever they are?” The middle school concept offers well-established and research-based guidance to answer that question. There is no way around that. Nor is there any way around the fact that it has often been poorly or partially implemented. It is fair to criticize the middle school movement for its poor or incomplete implementation rate, but it is not fair to declare the middle school concept or its goals a failure.
The large urban school districts at the center of the move to K-8 schools are very complicated systems. Their sheer size may well work against creating the smaller school communities favored by research. Diminishing state and federal resources make school success more difficult for students, the majority of whom already suffer the injustice of having to live in poverty (Kozol, 2005). And the moves to punish struggling schools and students, sterilize the curriculum, and demand unattainable test results come down especially hard on large urban districts.
t is misleading for the media and middle school critics to suggest that poor achievement and difficult conditions in our urban schools result from a particular school configuration. This sleight-of-hand rhetoric actually does a disservice to young adolescents and their schools by diverting attention from the more powerful effects of poverty and the unsavory re-segregation of our nation’s communities and schools (Bracey, 1997; Kozol, 2005). Poverty is the single greatest correlate and predictor of school success. K-8 schools do not necessarily outperform middle schools when serving students from the same neighborhood and especially when both serve high-poverty students. When will we learn that the schools are not simply a “black box?” What happens on the outside inevitably affects what happens inside.
The debate over which grade configuration is best for the middle grades distracts our attention from much more important topics (Beane& Lipka, 2006). The energy used for that debate would be much better spent creating a curriculum that intellectually engages and inspires young adolescents, pushing for organizing structures that support high quality relationships, and finding better ways to reach out to families and communities. And if we really want to do something worthwhile for many young adolescents, a good deal more energy must be spent working to overcome the poverty and prejudice that relentlessly work against their chances for success inside the school and a decent life outside it.
Looking Backward
Near the end of Mayhem in the Middle (p. 47), Cheri Yecke claims that the way to resolve the “mayhem” in middle schools is by “going back.” And herein lies the real text of the report Now Chancellor of K-12 Education in Florida, Yecke is a major player in the neoconservative ranks. A close reading of the report’s school case studies and the final sections reveals that this diatribe is not simply about K-8 schools. More than that, it is about promoting school choice, abstinence-only sex education, direct instruction and phonics, test scores and accountability, and other ultraconservative initiatives. The middle school just happens to be Yecke’s “pickle in the middle.”
The rule notwithstanding, sometimes you can tell a book by its cover – and occasionally even judge it too. For Mayhem in the Middle, it is a photo from Corbis Productions, a stock photography company offering thousands of “school” samples from which the Fordham Foundation could have chosen. But they chose this one. It is a 1960 photo of adolescents crowding a school corridor, pushing and shoving their way out at the end of the day. To one side stands a girl, books in hand, smiling demurely in the midst of hallway chaos. From a long-past era, frozen in time. Just like the author’s ideas.
References
Abella, R. (2005). The effects of small K-8 centers compared to large 6-8 schools on student performance. Middle School Journal, 37 (1), 29-35.
Anfara, V., & Lipka, R. (2003). Relating the middle school concept to school achievement. Middle School journal, 35 (1) 24-32.
Balfanz, R., Spiridakis, K, & Neild, R. (2002). Will converting high-poverty middle schools facilitate achievement gains? Philadelphia: Philadelphia Education Fund.
Baltimore City Schools. (2001) An examination of k-5, 6-8 versus k-8 grade configurations. Division of Research, Evaluation, and Accountability.
Beane, J. & Brodhagen, B. (2002). Teaching in middle schools. In V. Henderson (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching, 4th Edition. Washington, DC: America Educational Research Association, 1157-1174.
Beane, J. & Lipka, R. (2006). Guess again: Will changing the grades save middle-level education?” Educational Leadership, 63 (7), 26-32.
Bracey, G. 1997. Setting the record straight: Responses to misconceptions about public education in the united states. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
DePascale, C. (1997). Education reform restructuring network: Impact documentation report. Cambridge, MA: Data Analysis and Testing Associates.
Erb, T. (2005) The making of a new urban myth. Middle School Journal, 37 (1), 2-3 ff.
Felner, R.D., Jackson, A.W., Kasak, D., Mulhall, P, Brand, S., & Flowers, N. (1997). The impact of school reform for the middle years. Phi Delta Kappan, 78 (7), 528-550.
George, P. (1988). Education 2000: Which way the middle school? The Clearing House, 62 (Sept.), p.17
Hough, D. (2003). R3 = Research, rhetoric, and reality: A study of studies addressing NMSA’s 21st Century Research Agenda and This We Believe. Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.
Juvonen, J., Le, Y., Kaganoff, T., Augustine, C., & Constant, L. (2004). Focus on the wonder years: Challenges facing the American middle School. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation.
Kozol, J. (2005). The shame of a nation: The restoration of apartheid schooling in am erica. New York: Random House.
Lounsbury, J. & Clark, D. (1991). Inside eighth grade: From apathy to excitement. Reston, VA: National Association of Secondary School Principals.
McEwin, K., Dickinson, T., & Jacobson, M. (2005). How effective are k-8 schools for young adolescents. Middle School Journal, 37 (1), 24-28.
Offenberg, R. (2001). The efficacy of Philadelphia’s k-8 schools compared to middle grades schools. Middle School Journal, 34 (3), 23-29.
Research Committee. (2003). Research and resources in support of This We Believe. Westerville, OH: National Middle School Association.
Silberman, C.E. (1970). Crisis in the classroom. New York: Random House.
Simmons, R., & Blyth, D. (1987). Moving into adolescence: The impact of pubertal change and school context. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
The Twists and Turns of Mayhem in the Middle
James A. Beane
Mayhem in the Middle is filled with out-of-context and distorted quotes, overstated claims, factual errors, and contradictory statements. Here is a sampling. The page numbers refer to the report itself.
- p. iii: I am quoted as saying, “I would claim that the middle school concept is essentially destroyed.”
In context of the 2001 speech from which it was taken, the actual quote was: “the middle school concept requires that the teacher have the flexibility to work with students to define relevant themes or topics, draw upon a wide range of knowledge, select worthwhile projects and activities, and create appropriate assessments. When externally imposed standards, tests, and methods eliminate that flexibility, the middle school concept is essentially destroyed.”
- p. 2: The report states, “In retrospect, the middle school ‘concept,’ born as an egalitarian dream of activists such as education professor Paul George – who saw schools as ‘vehicles for [the] movement toward increased justice and equality in society’ – was doomed from the start.”
Paul George (1998) actually said: A great portion of today’s middle schools were established during the late sixties and the seventies as the nation wrestled with human rights issues and the concern for racial equality. The schools became the focus of social experimentation, the vehicle for movement toward increased justice and equality in the society as a whole. One of the ways in which dozens of districts attempted to desegregate their schools was through new middle schools . . In the South, in particular, the middle school rode the coattails of desegregation.”
- p. 7 Claiming that the junior high schools were caught up in progressive education in a large way is a historical stretch. Grace Wright of the US Office of Education surveyed junior high schools nationally in the mid-1950s and found that only about 8% had problem-centered block-time core programs, the model program of progressive junior highs.
- p. 8: I checked the reference section of about 30 books considered middle school “classics” and could not find one reference to the paper by C.L. Midjaas paper to which Yecke refers. Moreover, it was the first I had ever heard of it. To say that Midjaas was “prescient” or “very influential” is a far stretch of historical imagination.
- p. 9: The brain growth periodization theory to which Yecke attributes so much influence never really had much traction in middle schools and, in fact, only briefly appeared in the literature. Within a few years of its introduction – 25 years ago - it had disappeared from statements related to the middle school concept.
- p 15-16: The Rand Corporation report did indeed raise questions about the grade structures of middle schools and the problems of transitions. However they also reported that the middle school concept has substantial research support regarding academic and social achievement, including several comprehensive school reform designs derived from it. Thus it does not follow, as in the report, that the middle school concept is against academic achievement or does not have empirical support.
- p. 46: There is no evidence here (or elsewhere) that “the damage done by favoring non-academic endeavors has clearly taken its toll.” Nor does the middle school concept favor non-academic endeavors over academic ones.
- p. 52: It seems odd to call for a strict transfer policy when the author and sponsors of this report have otherwise pushed for complete parental choice in school selection.
- p. 57: Blue Earth, Minnesota has a middle school that has been implementing the middle school “concept” over the past few years. According to the state education department website, the school advanced from a 3 to a 4 star rating on the state academic achievement report card in 2004-05. According to local media reports parents in one of two feeder elementary school protested in 2005 about a plan to move the 6th grade in that school to the middle school, though none complained about the quality of the middle school itself (the other elementary school already sends 6th graders to the middle school).