Leadership for Effective Middle School Practice

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As guest editor Randy Elmore points out, the middle school educators whose articles appear in this section tell readers what it is like for leaders - particularly those at the building and classroom level - to introduce genuine reforms in day-to-day teaching. MUCH IS KNOWN about creating effective middle schools. In preparing to write the introduction to this special section, I reread material from 1989 - the date of the Carnegie Council report Turning Points - to the present. That literature is extensive and compelling. Its common theme is that middle schools should emphasize academic excellence and provide developmentally appropriate, equitable instruction. Specifically, according to Turning Points, the ideal middle school features the following elements: learning teams/communities, a focus on integrated content and critical thinking, flexible grouping for successful learning, empowerment of faculty, improved training for teachers, emphasis on health and safety for learners, and connections between schools and communities. One rarely finds all these elements in one school. However, it is possible to find schools with many of the elements. From these exemplary schools, we can learn about creating excellent middle schools. The articles that follow will acquaint readers with two such schools in Georgia, Crabapple Middle School in Fulton County and Five Forks Middle School in Gwinnett County. These schools' stories teach us that another element is crucial to the success of middle schools: effective leadership - at all levels and both inside and outside the school. In the early Nineties, conditions for middle school development in Georgia and Fulton County were favorable. The governor was education- minded Zell Miller, author of the 1985 Quality Basic Education Act, an omnibus reform bill with special incentives for creating middle schools. Fulton County's superintendent was James Fox, and the coordinator of middle schools was John Spindler. These Fulton officials wanted to challenge middle school principals to respond to the recommendations in Turning Points, so they offered the schools an opportunity to compete for grants to develop innovative programs. The message from the district office was clear. Build real middle schools, and we will support you. A number of schools received grants to encourage the implementation of middle school goals through multi-age grouping. One in particular, Crabapple Middle School, achieved a high degree of success. Articles in this special section by Linda Hopping, Camille McElroy, and Randy Elmore and Joe Wisenbaker describe the multi-age team (MAT) experiment at Crabapple Middle from 1993 to the present. …