Reviving Middle Grades Education by Returning to Fundamentals

Abstract

Both America's entrepreneurial spirit and its education systems need revitalization. Both have succumbed to different versions of the same malaise: putting too much emphasis on the bottom line while losing sight of core values. The heart of entrepreneurship - creative problem solving in response to society's needs - and the core of educational practice - fostering students in developing a broad range of skills, habits of mind, character traits, and social awareness to promote sustainable futures for themselves, their families, and their communities - seem to have been subverted by seeking to accumulate personal wealth on the one hand or focusing on raising standardized test scores on the other. Easy to measure and flaunt, these simplistic measures of success have diverted both our private institutions and our public schools from their fundamental missions. Commentators have been railing against the various failures of our education systems for as long as I have been alive - with a crescendo building over the past quarter century. In the eyes of many, we have been a nation at risk since the early 1980s. Examine the following quotes, all written in 1982 or 1983, collected by Linda Campbell (2009), editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. There's danger that the public trusts standardized tests as the only way they can know how a local school is doing. ... I hope the focus is on learning and academics and rigor, and it will come . . . that test scores will improve. (Bob Cameron, College Board) In many cases, economic concerns and lack of parental and community support combine with such factors as a language barrier, low attendance and high mobility to inhibit students in largely Hispanic areas. (Linda Campbell, editorial writer, Fort Worth Star-Telegram) The foundation for American education has to be the home. No school can compensate fully for failure in the home. And we've had massive failure in homes in this country. (Terrei Bell, U.S. Secretary of Education) These quotes offer just a taste of the dilemma facing us: We have not made noticeable progress toward solving any of these problems, which remain further from solution today than they were 25 years ago. Yes, there have been bright spots where small-scale programs have worked. There have been interventions initiated both from outside and inside the schools, but can we claim that systemic change has occurred that has resulted in our public schools doing a better job today of educating, across the board, our diverse array of American youth? Keep Your Eyes on the Recovery Point, Not the Wall These quotes are as current today as they were in the early 1980s. Why no more progress after more than 25 years of tinkering with the shortcomings of our schools? Let the following quote guide us as we attempt to understand the predicament of education. Good race drivers are taught that if their car is going out of control and heading to the wall, don't look at the wall. You immediately look at the recovery point. You have to look where you want to go. Your physiology is attached to what you look at. You are drawn towards what you picture. (Tice, et al., 1999) The time is right for us, as educators and citizens, to reinvent middle schools and public education, generally. While the ineffectiveness of public education and the middle grades, in particular, may be most obvious in our inner cities, with our language diverse students, with our special needs students, and with our low-income students, these conditions are, perhaps, just the canaries in the mines of education. While schools in a wide variety of communities have remained, in many ways, resistant to change over the past 25 years, our social makeup, our communications technology, and our economic realities have changed around us, rendering schools as we have run them irrelevant and ineffective. Our first challenge is to stop looking at the wall and start looking for the recovery point. …