True school reform means working with communities to identify their concerns and then trying to make changes to benefit students and their families. To do that, schools must begin by listening--quietly and sincerely--so they hear what their clients are saying about needed reforms in middle level education.
A superintendent of an urban district in the Midwest recently identified the middle level schools as "hot spots" of her school district. A New York superintendent said that "80 percent of the calls I get are about middle schools." A Pennsylvania board member reported, "We spend about half of our time on middle school issues."
Most school leaders would probably agree that middle level schools are dynamic, energetic, and sometimes controversial places. Looking for reasons, some point to the dynamic nature of the students they serve; others to the natural concerns of parents watching their children turn into adolescents; still others to the transitional nature of the institution itself, which bridges the nurturing environment of the elementary school with the competitive demands of the high school.
Regardless of the reasons for their place in the spotlight of many districts, middle level schools clearly receive a lot of attention, invite careful and often critical scrutiny, and engender strong public opinions about what they do and how they do it.
What Are the Issues?
To better understand the issues that invite such energetic discussion, we conducted a study to identify the concerns, issues, and questions about middle level education in four communities. These community studies--which focused on the views of teachers, parents, and the general public--are instructive for school leaders who wish to build strong community consensus and support for the middle level school. By clustering the thousands of responses, questions, complaints, and accolades into manageable categories, these studies provide a framework for understanding how schools build or erode community confidence in what they do.
Since the purpose of this study was to identify the issues that stimulate community concerns and criticism, the discussion that follows may appear to be uncompromisingly negative. Such was not the case. The schools in these communities do many things extremely well; the large majority of students are successful and happy as a result of attending them. It is important, however, to listen very carefully to the concerns of the clients served by the middle level school, even when the comments are uncomfortable, unpleasant, or even unjust. That is the purpose of the article: to listen to the voices of our clients as they tell us what inspires or destroys their confidence in us to help their children succeed.
The Communities
Greenlawn is an historically affluent suburb of a large city in the Northeast. Recently, population movement from the city has brought new diversity to the town, raising its minority population to 22 percent of the total student body. Among the minority groups, the most representative groups are Hispanics and Asians, many of whom require English as a Second Language services. Changes are also evident in the socioeconomic makeup of the community, with one part of the town being developed with multi-family housing units. Three middle schools serve the population, each reflecting the ethnic and economic composition of its local community, from a largely white and affluent population on one side of the town to a more ethnically and economically diverse group on the other side. Nearly 85 percent of high school graduates attend some form of higher education.
Eastboro is an older suburb of a medium size Northeastern city. Within the past five years, the population has shifted from being almost exclusively white and middle or upper class to a more diverse economic population which is 40 percent minority, mostly Hispanic, African-American, and Asian. During the 1970s, the district experienced a sharp decline in enrollment, a trend that was reversed in the late 1980s and 1990s as people left the city so their children could be enrolled in the higher performing suburban schools. This group of students is much more representative of the urban environment than were earlier student populations, and its diversity has challenged a school system accustomed to a much more homogeneous population. Approximately 80 percent of the high school graduates go on to higher education.
Middleboro is a suburban to rural community adjoining a large, industrial city in the Middle Atlantic region. The community is home to the city's international airport, which also provides jobs for many of its residents. The community has remained stable over time, with some growth in the sections adjoining the city and airport areas. Much of the township is still rural, although most agriculture has disappeared. In recent years, a wave of conservatism, prevalent in the state and region, has swept the community and its schools. Three board members are proclaimed conservatives, with one pastor identifying himself as a religious conservative. In the past three years, major issues have arisen over the development of outcomes-based education and the inclusion of gifted and talented students into the regular classroom. In the community, more than 80 percent of high school graduates attend higher education.
University City is a city of approximately 100,000, close to a large city in the Midwest. It is home to a world-renowned university of nearly 50,000 students. The minority population grew approximately 25 percent during the 1970s and 1980s, and has remained stable since then. More recently, the population has begun to reflect the demographics of the large city nearby as more families leave the city to improve their children's educational opportunities. Always a high-achieving community, recent studies showed that White students did very well but minority students achieved at a much lower level, prompting a district commitment to reduce the achievement gap within five years. Nearly 90 percent of this community's students reported participating in postsecondary education.
The Study
To identify the specific concerns of the parents and public in these communities, three approaches were used: surveys, individual and group interviews, and exit interviews with parents removing their children from the public middle school for a private alternative. (To remain focused on academic issues, only parents who were removing their child for non-religious reasons were included in this report.) Nearly 400 parents and other community members were interviewed individually or in small groups; 1,900 parents and community members were surveyed; and 325 parents participated in exit interviews.
An analysis of survey results revealed seven major themes or categories related to parent and public concerns regarding the middle level schools in their communities. Key word and trend analysis of interview data confirmed these themes and elaborated them with details and examples from parents' experiences. The categories into which parent and public concerns grouped themselves were anonymity; curriculum; rigor and challenge; safety, sociability, and civility; responsiveness; instruction; and parent and public relations.
For parents, the most dramatic difference between the elementary and middle level school was size. More important than absolute size, however, was its effects on all aspects of student life and the school program. First, parents reported a pervasive sense of anonymity, both for their child and for themselves. Only 39 percent felt that "there is an adult in this school who knows my child well and can offer advice and assistance." Specifically, they felt no one knew their child well enough to detect subtle differences in behavior or demeanor that might signal the early onset of a serious school problem. Parents used comments such as "falling through the cracks," or "quiet ones get overlooked" to describe their child's school experience. One parent said, "How can a teacher who must deal with 140 kids a day, some with pretty bad behavior or academic problems, be expected to pay much attention to my kid? Unless you're special in some obvious way, it's easy to get lost in the crowd."
Parents noted the difficulties of dealing with numerous teachers, as well. "When my child had a problem in elementary school, I called the teacher. She was my single point of contact with the school. Now, I'm not sure who to call." One parent noted that "my kid deals with 11 different adults a week. I think that's too much adjusting for a 12-year-old." Because counseling loads are so heavy in the middle schools, and advisers tend to see the student for only a few minutes each day, neither of these individuals were seen as providing the single information source parents found so helpful in elementary school. Even involved parents said they had difficulty contacting the right person for each situation; for parents who are hampered by busy work schedules or limited English proficiency, the school presents a particularly anonymous face.
Parents often reported being puzzled by the middle level curriculum's content and format. Only half the surveyed parents agreed that "the curriculum focuses on important knowledge and skills." One parent noted, "Elementary schools focus on skills; the high school is supposed to get kids ready for college or work. I'm not sure what the middle school does. It seems they do a lot of projects."
Other parents said they did not understand how the interdisciplinary units fit into the curriculum. They acknowledged that life was "interdisciplinary" and that real problems called for skills and knowledge from a variety of disciplines, but they were sometimes baffled by the topics and content of units of study. In one district, a parent noted that "the curriculum seemed to stop while they spent two weeks studying apples. Couldn't they find a more important problem...like crime or pollution...to focus on?" Such experiences led some parents to criticize the middle level curriculum as "trivial" and "disjointed."
Rigor and Challenge
Partly because the curriculum is not always clear, many parents lament the lack of "rigor" in the middle level program, citing low expectations for student work, trivial assignments, or vast quantities of mindless exercises in lieu of demanding, engaging work. "My child brings home worksheets that require little thought and virtually no writing," said one mother. Another said, "I think my kid writes rather poorly, yet she brings home A's in English and social studies. They must not be expecting her to write very much or they're accepting pretty low quality work." Low expectations for student work were particularly problematic for a number of minority students. In one case, a father said, "I don't make excuses for my kid just because we don't speak English well. That's what he's going to school for."
Related to this issue of rigor and challenge is the problem of equating rigor with the amount of work students are expected to do. One parent said, "There's a belief around here that if 5 word problems are challenging, 15 must be more so." Unfortunately, parents fail to see that as increasing rigor or challenge; indeed, they report being frustrated when their calls for a "more rigorous" program result only in more of the same kind of work their child has always done. Only 13 percent of parents thought that "the program in this school is rigorous and challenging"; 83 percent either disagreed or were unsure.
Complicating all these issues is the perception among many parents that standards for student performance are idiosyncratic to individual teachers or teams. Often, they said that within the same subject or grade level there were vastly different standards for student work. Several parents in Greenlawn said, "My kid is on the homework team. They get buried with it every night--3 or 4 hours worth." In the same school, others noted that their children were on "the project team," a group that assigns little homework, but expects students to produce complex interdisciplinary projects every month or so. Among all the parents surveyed, only 18 percent agreed with the statement, "This school has clear standards for student work." Fewer than 10 percent agreed that "the teachers in this school have common standards for student performance," and 20 percent agreed that "teachers in this school expect students to meet high standards."
Safety, Sociability, and Civility
More than 90 percent of parents felt their children were safe in their community's middle level schools, but they had other concerns about the behavior of students and the level of civility manifested in the schools. Among parents, only 22 percent thought "this school tolerates too much unruly or disruptive behavior by students," although nearly half the non-parent public thought schools were too tolerant. Parents, however, thought that schools tolerated too much rudeness, incivility, and unkindness among both students and adults. Almost a third (30 percent) said they believed the adults in the school did not model courtesy, civility, and kindness toward students or each other.
Part of the problem, many parents believed, was the lack of adult supervision in common areas of the school. During interviews, a number of parents said they did not see many adults in the hallways during class passing, and that supervision in the cafeteria and other common areas seemed to be assigned to a relatively small number of adults. In contrast, in schools where parents agreed with the statement "students are well supervised in this school," they also were inclined to agree that "students here are courteous and polite to adults and one another."
One of the prevailing issues for parents was the extent to which the school was responsive to their inquiries, needs, and requests. Indeed, the reason most often given by parents for withdrawing their children from a public school in favor of a private one was their belief that the private school would be "more responsive" to the needs of their child. "Responsiveness" is a broad concept, covering everything from the school's willingness to make program adjustments for a student because of special need, to the teacher's willingness to give a student extra help when he or she needs it.
Interviews confirmed that parents do not view responsiveness as simply acceding to their requests; rather, it implies that the school adopts an assertive stance in offering help to their child, sometimes before the parent even knows it is necessary. One parent who found her middle school very responsive said, "Mrs. X told my daughter 'you're real close to getting this. Come to school early or stay a few minutes later tomorrow and I'll go over it with you.' Then she called me at home to see if we could arrange the extra time. I was impressed!"
Although most parents understand the difficulty of such an assertive stance when a teacher is dealing with 125 or 150 students, they find in such behavior evidence that the school has overcome the problem of anonymity and do, in fact, "know" their child well.
Too often, said many parents, middle school professionals give the impression of being "overwhelmed" by their job. "My child's elementary teacher gave the impression that she had it all under control...that she was pretty well together," said one Middleboro parent, "but now her teachers seem to be overwhelmed by the number of kids, the number of classes...everything." And, while these observations are made with great sympathy for the demanding job middle school educators face, they still undermine parent confidence that the institution is prepared to deal effectively with their child's needs.
Still, more than 70 percent of parents found their school "generally responsive to my child's needs." However, they do offer some qualifications as well. "If you know to get the schools attention...and whose attention to get...you can get what you need," said a University City parent. Another parent who recently moved to Eastboro said, "I learned that the squeaky wheel gets the grease. I hate being a pest, but if that's what it takes, I'll do it."
Parents generally believed that "students receive high quality instruction in this school" (68 percent), but a significant number also were inclined to agree that "instruction is often dull and boring" (30 percent), and "most instruction is teacher lecture" (34 percent). Among parents interviewed in this study, parents noted that their children often complained of being bored, and that instruction consisted largely of teacher lecture, student seatwork, and paper-and-pencil testing. Fewer said that their children experience more variety, including cooperative learning, independent research, and hands-on activity in labs or classroom settings.
Technology use was routinely criticized. Only 11 percent of parents felt that "technology is used effectively to promote student learning"; more than 65 percent disagreed. Even in cases where technology was available, it tended to be confined to labs that students used either to take a "computer course" or for special projects, such as word processing assignments. In the view of the parents in this study, there was little integration of technology into normal instructional routines, except in relatively rare and notable cases. One Greenlawn parent observed, "my child uses a computer at home and in the public library, watches high quality science and history programs on cable TV...then goes to school and steps back 30 years."
Finally, parents perceived that schools did little to adapt instruction for students with special needs, talents, and interests. Only 18 percent of parents felt that "this adjusts its instruction to meet different student needs." This reflects the preponderance of whole-group instruction noted earlier and the difficulty teachers face in adapting instruction when confronted with so many students with special needs.
Willingness to adapt instruction is highly idiosyncratic; some teachers did it routinely, others did not. A Middleboro parent said, "Mr. B gives different assignments and different tasks to almost everyone and my [learning disabled] son was very successful in his class. His real problem came in English. Mr. R said, 'I treat everyone the same way. You either do it or you don't.' Most of the time [my son] didn't."
These feelings were prevalent among the parents of gifted and talented students as well. One Middleboro parent said, "the middle school doesn't even want to talk about what they do for gifted kids. I just keep getting stonewalled." This willingness (or lack thereof) to discuss options for students with special needs and talents is one of the most compelling bits of evidence that parents use in judging whether the school is "responsive" to their child.
Parent and Public Relations
Often, when parents said they found the school unresponsive, they elaborated by saying that it really "lacked effective ways of dealing with routine problems." (22 percent). One Greenlawn parent noted that "since I'm never sure whom to call, I usually start with the principal. But that seems to escalate the problem. There should be some other way to deal with routine problems. Maybe every kid needs to have a 'case manager' or something like that."
Because of the structure of the elementary school, where the point of contact is clear, home and school relations are seldom an issue. When a child reaches the middle level, the issue is quite different. Not only are parents confronted with a larger number of adults who work with their child, but middle level youngsters are notorious for not facilitating effective communication between the home and the school. Because of that set of circumstances, schools that have a systematic, planned public and community information program are seen by parents as both more receptive to them and more responsive to their children. Conversely, schools that do not engage in planned public relations are seen as unapproachable and unresponsive.
Related to parent and community relations is the problem of inconsistent communication from the various units of the district. One parent said, "I talked with my kid's elementary teacher about the little anxieties I had about sending him to the middle school next year. She said, 'I'd be concerned, too. I'm not sure what they do up there, but a lot of parents complain.' All of a sudden, my little anxieties became great big ones!" On the other end of the system, parents reported conversations with high school teachers in which they were told, in essence, "your kid may have done alright in middle school, but this is a whole new ball game. I don't know what they do down there, but they sure come here unprepared for high school work."
Even worse, such mixed messages come from the middle level school itself. Parents in every community reported that, when they asked a question about a school practice they were told by the middle level teachers, "I don't know why we do it. If it were up to me, I'd do it differently." One Eastboro parent said, "This thing (teaming) is a disaster. I'm surprised they learn anything at all. Everyone hates it, but no one does anything about it." Both the fact that it was a disaster and the universal hatred for teaming were probably questionable conclusions, but such inconsistent messages do little to inspire confidence in the middle level school.
It is clear that for every issue raised above, for every parent complaint, for every anecdote reported by parents, we can provide a logical explanation for why the schools do what they do, or why teachers behave as they behave. Unfortunately, if we do so, we miss the fundamental message from these studies.
Our job is not to explain why we do things that people find distressing; true school reform means we work with our communities in an open collaboration to identify concerns and try to change what we do to benefit students and their families. To do that, we must begin by listening--quietly and sincerely--until we truly hear what our clients are telling us about needed reforms in middle level education.
About the Authors
J. Howard Johnston is professor of secondary education, University of South Florida, Tampa, and Ronald D. Williamson is assistant professor of education at the University of North Carolina-Greensboro.