Muddle in the Middle

Middle-schoolism and academic failure:

If ever an education fad showed dreadful timing, reaching its intellectual and political pinnacle just as lightning struck the mountaintop, it's "middle schoolism." The key year was 1989, when the middle-school bible, an influential Carnegie-backed report named Turning Points, was published. It hit just as the governors and Pres. George H.W. Bush gathered in Charlottesville to place the United States squarely astride the standards-based reform that is antithetical to the central message of this education religion.

In the ensuing decade and a half, the National Middle School Association (NMSA) and its acolytes, flying the banner of "Turning Points" and arguing that the middle grades are no time for academic learning, argued with great success that these schools should be devoted to social adjustment, coping with hormonal throbs, and looking out for the needs of the "whole child."

That is the essence of middle schoolism as set forth in a stunning new Fordham report by Cheri Pierson Yecke. "Mayhem in the Middle," as it's called, is a thoughtful examination drawing on gobs of evidence that shows the middle grades are where U.S. student achievement begins its fateful plunge, and where a growing number of other nations begin to outpace us.

That the middle grades can be a time of strong academic growth and marked achievement in core skills and knowledge is demonstrated by numerous effective school examples. Though youngsters between the ages of 10 and 15 can be ornery and exasperating, they can also learn much about math and history, literature and science, and art and music. They can develop sound character, admirable values, good habits (with occasional slippage), positive attitudes (also with lapses), and excellent social skills. There's nothing about kids this age that undermines their capacity to learn and there's nothing about grades 5, 6, 7, and 8 that precludes them from being places of powerful teaching and intense learning from a solid core curriculum. All this can happen even in places called "middle schools." Grade configuration is not the key issue.

Yecke focuses instead on the education philosophy, assumptions, goals, and expectations that drive a school spanning the middle grades and those who lead and teach in it. If they worship at the altar of middle schoolism, their theology tells them not to dwell overmuch on academics; other things matter more. If these leaders and teachers subscribe to standards and results-based accountability, however, they will pay greater heed to their students' long-term prospects than to their short-run adjustments, and to the academic gains that play so large a role in these youngsters' futures.

Yecke's goal is to show why middle schoolism should be consigned to history's dustbin — another education fad that, however well intended, now needs to be retired.

The most successful educational system in the United States is the basic training program employed by the U.S. armed forces. Over the course of just a few months they routinely take soft civilians and turn them into the most lethal soldiers the world has ever known. They do so by demanding unrelenting high performance, and by being brutally intolerant of failure.

This model works well in academia. I graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and I can assure you that the entire first year was basic training-level intensity. The last three were no picnic either, unless your family liked to hike up and down mountains and leave the food behind. I received a better education at the Academy than I would have virtually anywhere else, and I've got the transcript to prove it (how many History majors do you know who took Thermodynamics, Astronautical Engineering, and Aeronautical Engineering, for example?)

There's a simple experiment one can undertake to uncover the success drivers for middle school education: pick a touchy-feely exemplar of the educational bureaucracy's best fads, then pick a military school. Gather up the students and give them a battery of tests, including character-based surveys.

Who do you think will prove to be better-educated and better citizens?