The Middle Children

There was an excellent article in the NY Times about middle school education. I am thrilled that this is starting to get the attention it deserves, and I also like the experiments that many school districts are working on.

The two schools, in disparate corners of the nation’s largest school system, are part of a national effort to rethink middle school, driven by increasingly well-documented slumps in learning among early adolescents as well as middle school crime rates and stubborn high school dropout rates.

The schools share the premise that the way to reverse years of abysmal middle school performance is to get rid of middle schools entirely. But they represent opposite poles in the sharp debate over whether 11- through 13-year-olds are better off pushed toward adulthood or coddled a little longer.

I like the logic behind each approach, but they can't both be right. Maybe the answer than is to blend the two - to have one grand school, K-12 where middle schoolers can be pushed to think about their future, while also allowing them to fall back into a safe environment if they need to (this idea might sound brilliant - or the opposite - but in fact there are plenty of pratical obstacles that come to mind).

The following quote though, if true, seems to be crux of the problem:

“One middle school student is like three high school students in terms of their behavioral needs and the issues you’re confronted with,” said Fred Walsh, principal of the School for International Studies in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

If that is the problem, than maybe it isn't about which group of students they are housed with.

Still, some middle school experts argue that school reconfiguration is a costly distraction from what adolescents really need: smaller classes, an engaging curriculum, personalized attention and well-prepared teachers.

I don't really have any answers on this one, except that this issue needs to continue getting more attention. As I have said before, there have been some great ideas in terms of improving elementary and high school education, but middle schools have getting ignored. What should be apparent is that the job of high schools is that much harder if the kids regress in middle school. I think it is long overdue that the middle children... I mean children in our middle schools, get more attention.