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Maryland Has Answer to Just What Middle Schools Need: More Standardization

Ohanian Comment: Anybody who knows middle schoolers knows that they are at an age in their lives when they need individual attention, flexibility, patience--and probably teachers who are just a bit whacky. So it comes as no surprise that Standardistos would call for regimentation and standardization. Referring to middle schoolers as "the weak link" does not seem a good place to start reform--especially coming from folk who themselves seem to have a few links missing.

Calling Baltimore County's middle schools a "weak link," Superintendent Joe A. Hairston is proposing an overhaul that would toughen instruction for sixth- to eighth-graders and focus their learning on core subjects such as language arts and math.

The goal is to improve academic achievement, which test scores indicate drops after pupils leave elementary school.

"Middle schools must challenge students to meet higher academic standards, and the curriculum should emphasize a deeper understanding of concepts," said Hairston, who presented the plan to the school board last week.

In Baltimore County last school year, the percentage of eighth-graders earning satisfactory scores on the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program, or MSPAP, tests fell in all subjects.

Hairston's plan, which goes to a committee to be fleshed out and wouldn't take effect until the 2004-2005 school year, promises drastic changes at some of the county's 26 middle schools.

For years, those schools have enjoyed wide latitude organizing their classes. But Hairston's Middle School Task Force, a group of parents, principals and school officials who spent two years studying the issue, blamed variations in school offerings for the poor performance of pupils overall.

The plan would standardize the schools' curricula, requiring 45-minute classes every day in English, mathematics, science and social studies for the county's 26,000 middle school pupils. It also would prescribe the content of those classes and give principals two options for scheduling them.

Mathematics teachers would receive training to make sure they are experts in their subjects, and the schools would have to offer extra help after school or on weekends.

In addition, all seventh-graders would receive 12 weeks of instruction designed to increase their awareness of college and steer them toward the tougher high school classes they will need to take to go to college.

"All of the recommendations focus on moving middle school students to higher levels of academic achievement," said Gwen Grant, the school system's executive director of secondary programs, who led the task force.

Across the country, school systems are trying to address the problem of middle school achievement. Studies have shown that American pupils' performance suffers in comparison with children in other nations starting in the middle grades.

The Southern Regional Education Board in Atlanta, which is helping more than 200 schools in 14 states improve their middle schools, has pushed for tougher academics.

Barbara Moore, associate director of the regional education board's middle school initiative, which is being used in Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties and in schools on the Eastern Shore, said one problem is that pupils review the same material year after year.

"Our curriculum is at least a year behind other countries' and that's pretty much in evidence by the middle grade level," Moore said. "That's because there's been a lot of repetition from about the third grade on."


Emotional needs

But Hayes Mizell, director of the program for student achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation in New York and an authority on middle school reform, said districts shouldn't ignore the emotional needs of middle school pupils.

"If you go down the academic-rigor path and you ignore who these kids are at this stage in their lives and what kind of learning will help them flourish, that's a mistake," he said.

Hairston said Baltimore County schools need to raise the academic standards of middle school classes because new federal and Maryland mandates penalize districts with persistently poor test scores.

"There's a weak link in our chain at the middle grades," Hairston said. "With the national attention on academic rigor, we have to strengthen our rigor in the middle grades."

His effort to toughen middle school coursework enjoys support from parents and the teachers union.

"My big concern when I was teaching in middle school 10 years ago was they really were getting away from the academics and spending a lot of time with the touchy-feely stuff," said Mark Beytin, president of the Teachers Association of Baltimore County. "So I'm looking for things that raise academic standards, and I think [this plan] does."


Cost to arts

School board members, who were given the plan at a meeting Tuesday, expressed support for the more rigorous standards but had reservations about the potential cost and the possible downgrading of art, dance, music and theater instruction.

"I want to register my concern about the time allocated to the arts programs," Phyllis E. Ettinger, a board member, said Tuesday night about the recommendation that arts classes meet twice a week. "I don't see how students will develop proficiency."

Meg O'Hare, who served on the Middle School Task Force and leads the Northeast Area Advisory Council of parents that advise school officials, agreed that arts instruction is important but said pupils need to master the core subjects most.

"Those are the skills that make you most successful in life," she said.


— Jonathan D. Rockoff
Middle schools reform planned
Baltimore Sun-Times
June 2, 2003
http://www.sunspot.net/news/education/bal-md.reform02jun02,0,2147907.story?coll=bal%2Deducation%2Dtop

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