Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2007 > January > 05 > Entry
What to do with kids in the middle?
There’s been some interesting back and forth in the comments under my recent post that mentioned the problem of middle schools.
Many districts, Dayton included, have decided middle schools are unsalvagable. Dayton is building new schools designed to keep kids in elementary schools until eighth grade.
The question is whether this is a good idea.
Dayton long ago began a program of closing down middle schools gradually. In my eight years covering the district, they’ve shut down Fairport, McFarlane, Roth and Kiser middle schools, redistributing the kids to other schools.
At least in Dayton it’s hard to argue with the district’s approach.
When I started covering Dayton schools in 1999, the district’s middle schools had an awful reputation — so bad that many families moved to the suburbs or transferred their kids to private schools when they left elementary school.
From what I saw, the reputation was deserved. On an early visit to Fairport, a former elementary school that was poorly suited for a middle school anyway, kids told me they detested the school and were glad it had been identified for closing. That was before the principal threw me off the property. Later I covered racial strife at Kiser. When Roth closed, it was the staff that was sentimental for the old school. The kids couldn’t have cared less.
But nothing compared with the day I spent following an A student through his day at McFarlane Middle School in 2000. I watched as he and his friends spent the day desperately trying to remain unnoticed in rowdy hallways, playgrounds and lunchrooms. In one class, a well meaning teacher gave up after 15 minutes of begging misbehaving kids to come to order. In another class, a teacher who had off-handedly described Nelson Mandela as a “terroist” handed out mind-numbing worksheet after worksheet. In another, kids spent a whole class watching the lamest video drama I’ve ever seen. In other words, very little instruction was evident during my visit. Was it any wonder why many of those kids later flunked state exams and dropped out?
With the exception of Stivers (the competition to get into that 7-12 school for the arts is extreme), the rest of the middle schools in Dayton were among the city’s worst.
For some, the instinct is to blame the kids at this age as unmanageable. I think middle school kids get a bad rap in that regard. For more than a decade I coached youth baseball and I alway preferred the middle school age kids. Unlike very young kids, they were smart and mature enough to actually execute what was taught but less obnoxious than high schoolers, who sometimes think they already know it all. And middle school kids are goofy, but fun.
As some commenters pointed out, K-8 schools are an old idea that has worked in the past. I tend to buy the argument that a small group of older kids in an elementary school are more likely to take up leadership roles in the school than they would if they were just thrown in with a few hundred other kids with similarly raging hormones.
Somewhere I read a critic of middle schools deriding the whole idea of walling off kids at this age as they go through their most difficult physical and emotional changes, arguing that this is the time when they need to be exposed to others outside their peer group. Otherwise they end up in their own sort of tweener bizzaro world.
Are the younger kids placed at greater risk? In most K-8 schools, the older kids are kept pretty segregated from little kids most of the time. Dayton’s new elementary school designs place them in entirely separate wings across the school from each other.
It’s been noticable that there was little sorrow for the middle schools as they closed. Perhaps that, too, suggests support for the board’s move. It will be interesting to see if the move brings the desired effects in terms of better retention of students and higher test scores.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Teaching and Learning
Comments
By Chris
January 7, 2007 1:19 AM | Link to this
Catholic schools have always been K-8 without any ill effects. Does this mean the public schools could reduce the number of administrators?By Carolina
January 6, 2007 12:01 AM | Link to this
Good topic. I’ve been waiting to see the effects of these K-8 schools, and have heard various comments pro and negative. As a teacher of one of the two remaining middle schools, I can understand the advantages of K-8. I’ve enjoyed the conversations from those in parachoial schools who have experienced K-8 schools. I attended a traditional middle school, and it was the worst years of my life. That may have been one of the things that drew me to teaching this agegroup.