THERE IS no more frustrating level of education for parents than the middle grades. No other period is so marked with contradictions. Parents who worry about the flashes of anger, belligerence, and unreliability in their adolescent child one moment might be reassured by the compassion, intelligence, and glimpses of maturity in the next. But no matter what emotional changes confront parents, many sit down at the dinner table each night facing children who are bored, unchallenged, and frustrated during the hours they spend in school. Many of these parents remember their own experiences in the wasteland of academic challenge that too often constitutes the middle-grade years. Although educators have worked diligently to incorporate the principles of good middle-grades education into these institutions, many parents are concerned that middle schools have been so focused on the developmental needs of adolescents that they have made academics secondary. For a number of years, these parents have been complaining to principals, school board members, and legislators that this is unacceptable. Making Middle Grades Matter, a project of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB), is assisting 13 states and 28 school sites by providing publications, technical assistance, and assessment and networking services. At a July 2000 SREB conference on middle-grades education, Gene Bottoms, senior vice president of SREB, suggested that middle schools learn from high schools about how to improve student achievement by giving more students access to an academic The project conducted a broad survey of middle school faculty members, which yielded some surprising findings: Only 33% of the teachers agree strongly that the school pushes students to do their best. In other words, most teachers believe that you have a school climate that allows students to slide through with little effort. Sixty percent of teachers report that they assign one hour or less of homework weekly, a fact that reinforces the picture of a school climate that allows students to get by without making much of an effort. Again, there seems to be deeply embedded in middle-grades thinking the concept that, if you are not a very good student, we will not damage your self- esteem by asking you to make an effort. Student misbehavior as a problem reported by 86% of teachers may be due to boredom; they also may have correctly read the middle-grades setting - a belief they are not worth the school's effort. Only 35% of teachers say they consistently require students to revise their work to meet standards. Again, this suggests to youth that you really can do sloppy work and get by. schools, Bottoms continued, can take some specific actions, such as increasing the percentage of students in accelerated courses. Middle-grades schools should enroll 20% to 30% of students each year in more accelerated courses and provide teachers with the support they need to learn how to teach differently to get more students to master the advantaged academic core. It is an incremental approach that has worked, he said. Bottoms also argued that middle-grades schools could undertake the following types of research: * teams of faculty members could interview failing ninth-grade students and probe what these students wish the middle schools had done for them; * another group of faculty members could interview 10th-grade dropouts, asking what students think their middle-grades school could have done to better prepare them for high school (the interview results would be shared with the entire faculty); * a committee of teachers could meet with teachers of college-prep English, algebra, and science in grade 9 to determine what students need to know and be able to do to succeed in their courses; and * a group of faculty members could keep track of the percentage of eighth-graders who succeed in the college-prep curriculum in ninth grade and report back to the rest of the faculty what actions could be taken to try to increase that percentage. …