Believing in Ourselves: Urban Middle School Reform

Believing in Ourselves

POSTSCRIPT

The problems of the inner-city urban middle schools in the Clark network sometimes obscure the truly important legacy of their five-year struggle for reform. That legacy is the triumph experienced by some schools, teachers, and students. It demanded hard, hard work that will never end. It required collaboration among many and took the comfort away from many others. It meant risk-taking. Yet, teachers gained confidence, and students achieved far beyond what had been assumed before both attempted change.

Even the Clark districts where middle school improvement fell far short of expectations are more sophisticated about systemic reform now than they were at the beginning.

A "pivotal conversation" with Clark staff about the need for vision motivated Oakland's Yolanda Peeks to organize task forces that developed a plan for the middle grades. The district now wants to convert all or most of the remaining junior high schools to middle schools. It is rearranging resources to provide equitable offerings in all schools no matter what their enrollment, and it hopes to place staff development under a Middle Grades Education Council.

Milwaukee's work on curriculum, standards, and new assessments at the district level provides a framework for reforms. The Clark grant "helped us understand we were tinkering around the edges of school change," says the new superintendent, Robert Jasna. As the Clark grant was ending, the school system adopted a school-to-work initiative that essentially embodies a districtwide reform plan. Of the 10 initial schools in the project, four were middle schools, including Kozy. Its partnership with businesses to provide experiential learning for students about careers had expanded from one teacher to a school-wide effort during the Clark years. The district's school-to-work program was to extend to 44 schools in its second year, integrating 11 middle schools into the curriculum changes and experiential learning of the school-to-work plan.

In Baltimore, a system of computerized curriculum resources for middle school teachers was completed as the grant ended, and plans were being redrawn for the citywide middle grades institute that will embody a new reform initiative. The Lombard Academy became a demonstration middle school, moving one grade at a time through innovations built around sound principles for the middle years.

Some urban districts have greater success raising
student achievement because they have a special kind of integrity and civility in the relationships they develop with their principals and teachers.

The Clark districts share the same context for education reform in that they must educate very poor students with dwindling resources. Their teachers are often worn down by young folk whose hopelessness and lack of self-discipline make them reject the goals of the school. Nor do many urban teachers have the resources, facilities, and professional community they should have to succeed.

Some districts, however, are better able to organize support for teachers and administrators in raising student achievement than are other districts. Those that have greater success do so, not with a richness of resources or magic tricks, but with a special kind of integrity and civility in the relationships they develop with their principals and teachers. And with a firm idea about where they want the schools -- and student achievement -- to go.

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from Believing in Ourselves: Progress and Struggle in Middle School Reform. By Anne C. Lewis. Published in 1995 by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.