Middle schools: Something new or tried and true?

NEA Today, Nov 1999

The middle school is emerging from its own adolescence. What lessons can we draw about what makes for learning success?

The oast twi decades have witnessed an enormous growth in middle schools. Researchers have been busy, too, and they now have a good bit to report on what works.

Which grade configuration seems to work best for kids in the 10- to 14-years-old range?

With so many school configurations in place-grades 5-8, 6-8, 7-9, 5-7. and more-the only element all middle schools have in common is grade 7, says Peggy Gaskill, the director of the Michigan Schools in the Middle program at Central Michigan University.

Most middle-school professionals seem to prefer the grade 6-8 school model. The percentage of schools in this age range based on 6-8 jumped from 15 percent in 1981 to 55 percent in 1995.

In grades 6 through 8, notes Gaskill, children undergo a host of turbulent physical, social, emotional and intellectual changes. The three-grade configuration "`gives us a transition year, and then a period of calm before they start getting ready to leave again."

Are interdisciplinary teams mak ing a significant difference?

Peggy Gaskill remembers seeing as many as 170 students a day coming through her Detroit classroom in the days before teams.

"I wanted them all to succeed," she says, "but I wondered about it being humanly possible."

Now, notes Gaskill, teaming allows teachers from several disciplines to work with one defined group of students, building personal relationships and a community of learners.

"Achievement is improved and there are fewer discipline problems when you have children in these kind of communities," Gaskill says. "Teams in schools can be positive 'gan.gst for kids. Research shows kids need to belong."

But, Gaskill cautions. teams won't function well-and children's achievement levels may fall short of their potential-unless sufficient time is set aside for teachers to do team planning. Individual planning time for instruction, she adds, is also essential.

The two can go hand in hand, Gaskill believes.

"Middle schoolers aren't squirrelly," she explains. "They're just trying to make decisions about the kind of adults they'll become. They can learn. These children have the need for academic stimulation as well as warm fuzzies. If children feel they'll do well, they will."

But the push for higher scores and more testing shouldn't result in middleschool educators ignoring developmental issues, stresses Gaskill.

"Our job is to prepare them for life." she says, "not just for high school."

What's behind the movement toward specific middle-school teacher certification?

Traditionally, there's been a misfit between teacher-preparation programs for elementary or secondary certification and the actual three-tiered way schools are organized.

But that's changing, says Gaskill, who's on the teacher preparation and certification committee of the National Middle School Association.

About 33 states currently have some tape of specific middle-school credentialing. The goal, Gaskill adds, is for young adolescents to have teachers who are their advocates rather than have teachers "who really want to be somewhere else."

The push toward increased content expertise for middle-school teachers is also fueling the certification movement. National Middle School Association licensure guidelines call for concentration in at least two academic areas.

New research, says Gaskill, shows two-teacher teams with perhaps 60 students as the best match, making content expertise even more critical.

Who makes a good middleschool teacher?

"You have to be able to laugh at yourself and be flexible," says Juana Hawkins. a sixth-grade teacher at Silver Spring International, in Silver Spring, Maryland.

This 26-year veteran says middleschool students-who act like independent adults one day and get in a tizzy over their new lockers the next-need teachers ready for a challenge.

Her colleague Denise DeFiore says the ideal middle-school educator combines the elementary teacher's strategies with the high school teachers passion for and knowledge of a subject area.

What's on the horizon?

The National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, a public/private partnership, recently named two "schools to watch"-one rural and one in a small city-and is searching for an inner-citv school others can emulate.

The two schools, each with a substantial number of at-risk students, have one element in common: They're moving toward academic success for all in a way that's developmentally sound. For more, check www.edc.org/FSC/ MGF/Schools/home.html.

To learn more. .

For more about the Michigan Schools in the Middle, call 517/77-GR-678 or see http://edcen.ehhs. cmich.edu/ ~msim/. Also contact the National Middle School Association at 800/528NMSA or on the Web at www.nmsa. org/html.