1. Navigating the Middle School
Expedition
C. Kenneth McEwin
Tracy W. Smith
Appalachian State University

2. Expedition
• An expedition typically refers to a long
journey or voyage undertaken for a specific
purpose, often exploratory, scientific,
geographic, military or political in nature.

3. SO, WHAT IS THE MIDDLE
SCHOOL EXPEDITION?
• What is the purpose of the journey?
• What is the destination?
• What are the challenges we face
along the way?
• What tools do we need to be
successful?

4. The Legacy of Middle School Leaders:
In Their Own Words
• Project conceptualized in 2002
• Investigation of a major educational reform in
American education – the Middle School
Movement
• Design
• Book published in 2011
• Major findings

5. Major Findings Topic Summary
• articulation and communication of the
ideology and identity of middle school
education
• implementation of the various and collective
components of the middle school philosophy
• attention to the unique needs of young
adolescents
• the reorganization of middle schools; the
influence of the middle school on American
education

6. Major Findings Topic Summary
• the implementation of appropriate curriculum for
young adolescents
• attention to appropriate teaching and learning
practices
• development of a substantial, scholarly
knowledge base
• commitment to specialized middle level
professional preparation and development
• the influence of policy, politics, and
accountability initiatives on middle school
education

7. Wanted: Middle Level Leaders!
• Leaders are needed to continue
the work that has been started on
behalf of young adolescents and
the schools that serve them.
• The passion and intellectual
energy that fueled those early
years of conceptualization and
implementation of middle schools
is being extinguished by public
and governmental forces that
value quantitative data more than
responsiveness to the needs of
young adolescents.

8. Representative Remarks
Paul George discusses need for leadership and the
status of the Middle School Movement as an
educational reform

9. Ideology and Identity of
Middle School Education, 1 of 4
• Early leaders - determined to right the wrongs
in the way that young adolescents were being
educated
• Clear ideas, honorable motives, varied
backgrounds and geographic locations
• The attraction to educating young adolescents
has often had a spiritual dimension. It has been
called a moral imperative and a mission.

10. Ideology and Identity of
Middle School Education, 2 of 4
• Devoted energy to making middle schools look
and operate differently from their junior high
school predecessors.
• It was some years before they began collectively
examining and articulating their ideology about
middle school education.
• In retrospect, some of the early leaders consider
this a great weakness of the Movement.

11. Ideology and Identity of
Middle School Education, 3 of 4
• Some participants believed that early leaders did have a
clear ideology, one grounded in Progressive Education.
• Among them, John Arnold, James Beane, Tom
Dickinson, Nancy Doda, Paul George, and John
Lounsbury, who described the Middle School
Movement as “progressive education in contemporary
dress.”
• Perhaps it was not a lack of ideology that impaired the
Movement but a failure to communicate that ideology
clearly, widely, loudly, or consistently enough. [Joan
Lipsitz video clip.]

12. Joan Lipsitz
• Discussing the starting of a movement

13. Ideology and Identity of
Middle School Education, 4 of 4
• In 1982, the National Middle School Association
published This We Believe, its landmark position
statement about the organization’s vision for schools for
young adolescents.
• The Middle School ideology, then, has been
characterized somewhat differently for those who have
spent much of their professional lives inside it. At its
core is the intent to provide the best possible education
for young adolescents.
• Individuals who have been involved have established
their own positions about how that education might
look and even why it is important.

14. Implementation of the Components of
the Middle School Philosophy, 1 of 3
• Participants characterized the implementation of middle
school practices and programs as disappointing and too
focused on structural changes.
• Current challenge: too many middle schools that too
narrowly define themselves.
• Many changed the school’s name and grade
configuration from junior high to middle school; may
have started to implement some of the middle level
organizational structures such as teaming or block
scheduling, but they only began the journey and have
stalled out.

15. Implementation, 2 of 3
• Major mistake: implementing incrementally; leaders tried to
implement middle school practices a little at a time.
• We can no longer have a checklist or menu mentality about
implementing best practices for middle level schooling.
• Ken McEwin and Tom Gatewood recounted a prophetic
warning Bill Alexander made very early in the Middle
School Movement: “He [Bill] said we had to be really
careful and not standardize the middle school.
• One of the problems with the junior high school was that it
became the same everywhere; it became standardized.” Ken
McEwin maintained that “there are certain essential
elements that ought to be in every middle school, but how
those are implemented depends on the students and teachers
and the community.”

16. Implementation, 3 of 3
• The good news is that we now have a growing body of
research to support empirically the implementation of
middle school practices and structures.
• Middle schools that more authentically follow the
middle school concept (e.g., interdisciplinary team
organization) have higher standardized test scores in
reading and mathematics than do randomly selected
middle schools.
• Studies show that middle schools that have high levels
of implementation of programs and practices associated
with the middle school concept have higher
achievement scores than schools that have only
partially implemented the middle school.

17. Attention to the Unique Needs of
Young Adolescents, 1 of 3
• Participants believe that young adolescents have
benefitted from the efforts of middle school initiatives.
• Joan Lipsitz’s recollection helps us understand the
magnitude of our progress in this area. She explained
that when she wrote Growing Up Forgotten (1977),
early adolescence was a “non-field.”
• Now, nearly 50 years after William Alexander proposed
the middle school in 1963 and nearly 40 years after the
publication of Growing Up Forgotten (1977), millions
of young adolescents have benefitted from an approach
to education that was specifically conceived to attend to
their needs.

18. Attention to the Unique Needs of
Young Adolescents, 2 of 3
• Our most vulnerable students are the very
students in middle school who need heightened
affiliation, heightened intimacy, heightened
connection with human beings, long term
accountability relationships with adults and other
kids.
• Participants such as Nancy Doda, Tom Gatewood,
and John Lounsbury spoke about the power of
middle schools to provide places of affiliation for
young adolescents and that such affiliation is
connected to academic accomplishment and
positive self-esteem.

19. Attention to the Unique Needs of
Young Adolescents, 3 of 3
• As with most aspects of education, we must
communicate more effectively about young
adolescents and their needs. We cannot let the
portrayals of young adolescents in the media
prevail as the public’s perception of reality.
• As observed by Nancy Doda, “We must
emphasize the “wonderful, rich, beautiful,
intellectual, philosophical, and spiritual side of
development.”

20. The Reorganization of Middle Schools,
1 of 3
• Using the definition of middle schools as those
containing grades 5-8, 6-8, and 7-8, there were
4,884 middle schools in the United States in 1970.
By 2008, there were 13,227 middle schools with
those organizational plans.
• We have now reached a professional and public
consensus about what middle schools look like.
• Tom Dickinson noted that one of the successes of
the Movement is that people understand that the
middle school is focused on development.

21. Reorganization, 2 of 3
• Organizational approaches should reflect ideology,
implementation, and responsiveness to young adolescents.
• Despite the progress and popularity of middle school
organization and the proven success of middle school
practices, organizational issues are not without controversy.
• Some middle school leaders remarked that the Middle
School Movement became too preoccupied with
organizational aspects of schools or “procedural
orthodoxy.”
• In recent years, the organizational focus has been changing
to a more flexible understanding of middle schools.

22. Reorganization, 3 of 3
• The reorganization of middle-level schools in America
has been profound and far-reaching.
• Middle school is now a part of the education
establishment.
• With the restructuring work behind us, middle school
leaders can hope that the best is yet to come, that we
are now positioned to get to the work of developing and
providing the best possible services and education
within those structures to maximize the potential of
young adolescents as the brightest human capital on
earth.

23. Influence of the Middle School on
American Education, 1 of 2
• Perhaps the most obvious influence is that the middle school has
changed the structure and continuum of American schools and
schooling from a two-tiered system of elementary and secondary
to a three-tiered system of elementary, middle, and high school.
• The public has accepted middle school as a school, as an
organization. I think there is a general feeling that it needs to be
different from elementary, different from high school but it’s a
necessary, separate entity of its own.
• John Lounsbury: “We’ve remade the face of American education,
no question about it. Middle school is now seen and heard
everywhere.”
• Raised awareness of young adolescence as an important and
distinct developmental stage.

24. The Influence of the Middle School on
American Education, 2 of 2
• Not all news is good.
• Howard Johnston suggested that “middle schools have been
unfairly targeted as the weak link in the system…The
institution has never caught the imagination, or the
commitment, of the American people to the extent that it
deserves.”
• Without governmental support of middle schools as a critical,
unique tier in the American education system, we will
continue to struggle for public support and commitment.
• We must examine our motives, our advocacy, our practices,
and our role in American education. We must work
collaboratively to rededicate ourselves to present and future
generations of young adolescents.

25. Appropriate Curriculum for Young
Adolescents, 1 of 6
• In our transcript data, the topic with the most
“coverage” across our participants was
curriculum.
• In spite of the rich curriculum heritage of the
Middle School Movement, and perhaps
because of it, almost all of our research
participants expressed disappointment about
the implementation of appropriate curriculum
for young adolescents.

26. Appropriate Curriculum, 2 of 6
• “I think curriculum, outside of the interdisciplinary
emphasis, has been one of the most neglected things in the
Middle School Movement.” (John Arnold)
• “If there’s one indictment of the Movement – that is
one…that we did not pay attention to the curriculum
probably from day one as we should have because we had
an inheritance from the junior high school with the separate
subject curriculum which we should have looked at as part
of our organizational changes and we didn’t.” (Tom
Dickinson)

27. Curriculum, 3 of 6
• Paul George concurred that “our influence
on what the curriculum is has been far less
than what our influences have been on
school organization like teaching, team
organization, and flexible schedules and
that sort of thing.”
• James Beane and Chris Stevenson
remembered fondly specific moments and
times when curriculum innovation on
behalf of young adolescents was alive, but
like many other participants, they spoke
with regret about missed opportunities.

28. Curriculum, 4 of 6
• Hindrances or barriers that have prevented
maximum success in the development of an
appropriate curriculum for young adolescents:
– federal, state, and local mandates
– proliferation of public policies and practices that
compel schools and teachers to segment knowledge
for the purpose of making teaching and the assessing
of it more “efficient”
– tradition of separate-subject approach to curriculum

29. Curriculum, 5 of 6
• The fate of integrated curriculum is often
determined more by outside factors than by any
debate about its educational merits.
• Tom Erb, Joan Lipsitz, Howard Johnston and
other participants expressed that they value
standards and their potential to influence
curriculum innovation for young adolescents.
Without exception, it was the standardization of
curriculum and the overemphasis on standardized
tests that our participants opposed.

30. Curriculum, 6 of 6
• James Beane stated that “the road to rigor with young
adolescents has to run through relevance.” In the midst of
the standards and accountability movement, and in spite of
it, middle level leaders persist in their belief that young
adolescents must be involved in making decisions about
their learning. It is most centrally what defines an
appropriate curriculum for the age group.
• As the emphasis on standardized tests and curriculum has
increased, exploratory teachers and their curriculum have
been further alienated because time for their courses and
students’ opportunities to attend their classes are often taken
away because time and resources are directed to teaching
and remediating in the “real” subjects.

31. Attention to Appropriate Teaching and
Learning Practices
• Participants expressed a positive view about innovations in
instruction for young adolescents.
• The Middle School Movement has been tremendously
influential with regard to instruction.
• Middle school classrooms today more so than thirty or forty
years ago involve much more hands-on, engaging type
activities, to some degree projects, and to some degree
inter-disciplinary or multi-subject units and activities.
• Nancy Doda noted that “teachers today are more likely to
engage in collaborative teaching methods than they did in
the 1960s.” She stated that generally speaking, middle
school classrooms today are “livelier and more engaging in
methods and pedagogy than they were in the 1960s.”

32. Development of a Substantial,
Scholarly Knowledge Base
• A substantial, scholarly research base for middle
school education is important.
• Growing body of research related to middle
school education and young adolescence.
• Research has shown that implementing middle
school practices makes a positive difference for
young adolescents. (Tom Erb, Ken McEwin)
• Middle school teachers have benefitted from a
growing body of descriptive data about what good
middle school teaching looks like. (John Arnold)
• Unanimous belief that more research is needed.

33. Specialized Middle Level Professional
Preparation and Development, 1 of 2
• Without exception, participants in this study are
advocates of specialized middle level teacher
preparation.
• Critical to the success of young adolescent
students and middle-level teachers whose
confidence, effectiveness, and efficacy are
increased when they feel knowledgeable.
• Knowledgeable teachers are better positioned to
lead innovative efforts on behalf of their students.

34. Specialized Middle Level Professional
Preparation and Development, 2 of 2
• The failure of the Middle School Movement to
advocate for and establish specialized middle school
teacher education programs early became a barrier to
maximizing its progress.
• The overall course of action, it seems, is to do whatever
we can to support the training and preparation of all
professionals (e.g., teachers, principals, counselors)
who work with young adolescents in middle-level
schools so that they will feel prepared, confident, and
determined to have an impact.
• Any other approach is the equivalent of “malpractice.”
(Ken McEwin and Tom Dickinson)

35. Influence of Policy, Politics, and
Accountability Initiatives, 1 of 2
• State and national politics and policies affect education
at every level, and middle level education has been
especially vulnerable to the changing tides of politics.
• At the state level, perhaps the two most influential
elements of policy are related to teacher licensure and
the curriculum.
• Many states now have specialized middle level teacher
licensure or endorsement.
• Also, many states have a curriculum that is divided into
elementary, middle, and high school levels.

36. Influence of Policy, Politics, and
Accountability Initiatives, 2 of 2
• Policies at the national level have not been so friendly to
middle level education.
• Major national bills like Title I and No Child Left Behind
reorient our schools.
• NCLB also narrowly defines teacher quality and student
success.
• Joan Lipsitz seemed to suggest that we cannot merely reject
the entire notion of public accountability. Rather, we must
offer alternatives, ways to demonstrate that the time young
adolescents spend in our schools adds value to their
individual lives and adds to the cohesion of our democratic
society.

37. Current Status of Middle Level
Education, 1 of 3
Good News First
• More teachers than ever are more understanding and
responsive to young adolescents.
• The greatest asset of the Middle School Movement has
been a serious and more than rhetorical commitment to
young adolescents. (James Beane)
• The middle school concept has brought more teachers
into better relationships with young adolescents. And I
think it has made their lives better. I think they are
happier about being a teacher than they would have
been had the concept not opened the door for them.
(Beane)

38. Current Status of Middle Level
Education, 2 of 3
• We know more about best practices than we’ve ever
known before; we know what good pedagogy looks
like; we know what good middle schools can look like;
we know that the research supports these practices that
we can articulate.
• Convergence of understanding about great teaching, the
advances of looking at quality of student work have
improved conversations around teaching and learning.
• Middle school is established as a legitimate part of the
continuum in K-12 American public education system.

39. Current Status of Middle Level
Education, 3 of 3
Bad News
• Lack of complete implementation.
• Described it variously as in limbo, in a pause, in neutral,
stagnant, at a standstill, not growing, no new ideas, in a state
of arrested development, a plateau, losing ground, at a peak,
but could be starting downhill, in a defensive mode, under
assault, unfairly targeted as the emblem of school failure in the
United States, shaky, struggling, a process of becoming, in for
some rough roads, fragile, being eroded, in trouble, the
whipping boy for public education.
• These words and phrases suggest that participants characterize
the Movement as being in a passive, neutral stance.
• They described their own dispositions as reluctantly cynical,
wanting to be hopeful, and cautiously optimistic.

40. Movement
• In horology, a movement is the internal mechanism of a clock
or watch, as opposed to the case, which encloses and protects
the movement, and the face which displays the time.
• In the Middle School Movement, it seems we worked to create
a model of a school, a case to enclose and protect young
adolescents and our beliefs about their sacredness.
• We also worked to communicate that model to others, to
expose the right face for middle schools.
• Some schools literally changed their faces by changing the
signs on their door from “junior high school” to “middle
school.” However, the essence of those schools, their inner
workings, were not fully developed.

41. Possibilities
• Fortunately, the middle school leaders
who participated in our study did not
concede defeat with a passive
characterization of middle school
education.
• Rather, they offered many insights for
reigniting Middle School Education
as a vibrant, dynamic, “green and
growing edge of educational reform.”

42. Next Steps
• In light of this information and these findings,
what do you see as your role in promoting an
appropriate education for young adolescents in
your school, district, community, and state?
• How do you plan to navigate the expedition of
progress in middle level education and reform?