Schools for Tomorrow Blog

The New York Times recently ran an article about a new trend in middle school reform: out with middle schools. 

Schools from New York City to California (including our Mapleton district) are experimenting with absorbing those middle grades-only schools; they’re being incorporated into a K-8 or a 6-12 structure.  Why, you ask?  Well, the slump in test scores causing us educators so much grief gains massive momentum in these middle years.  The idea behind the reform is that a K-8 structure absorbs some of the rough transition kids feel when they enter into traditional middle schools.  11-14 year-old kids are already bombarded with hormones, social cliques, and emerging adulthood.

In a K-8 structure they can turn to teachers they have grown up with for extra support as they deal with all of these many challenges.  A different philosophy underlies the 6-12 structure: in such schools, educators are thinking, younger students will naturally focus on their futures as they watch older students work hard to get into college.

I feel mixed about the purposes of this reform.  Fewer transitions make sense: I’m all for building community and continuity in kids’ learning lives.  School can be a place of safety and stability, especially for kids growing up in poverty (given that living in poverty can cause family transience). 

Maybe this new vision of middle school would help support safety for student learning – which would be a very good thing.  And yet, switching to this structure isn’t going to change anything unless we’re also addressing bigger issues like best practice, poverty, race, student engagement, bullying, changing demographics and achievement gaps… in these new K-8 or 6-12 schools.

I don’t understand how we can even tell if this kind of reform is ‘working’ or not.  We can and do look at test scores across the country, comparing the scores of these new schools with the scores of traditional middle schools.  If the scores are higher we think ‘working’ and if they remain the same we scratch our heads. 

We can wonder if changing structure will be a cure to falling test scores… and if we do that we are yet again putting a band-aid on this gigantic problem of school reform.  How do we support student academic achievement when their scores begin falling?  How do we support kids to such a degree that their scores do not begin falling in the first place?  And, how can all kids discover that they are leaders in the world of tomorrow?

Focusing on structure alone is an attempt at circumventing our problems, and we can’t avoid them.  However, maybe a supportive middle school structure can give us all the space we need to face and address them.