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[Remarks of Hayes Mizell on July 10, 2000 at a conference of representatives of states, school systems, and schools participating in the Making Middle Grades Matter initiative of the Southern Regional Education Board. The conference was held at the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, TN and included 285 state department of education staff, school administrators, and teachers from 13 states and 28 school districts. Mizell is Director of the Program for Student Achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.]


The War We Are In

About 160 miles from here there is a small city that did not exist 58 years ago. In 1942, the federal government carved the town of Oak Ridge out of 60,000 acres of wooded ridges and hilly farmland, sweeping away four existing small communities and displacing 1,000 families. The government chose this area of eastern Tennessee for four reasons: (1) the land was cheap, costing only $45.00 an acre; (2) the area was sparsely populated and its terrain isolated it from the outside world; (3) there was easy access to electrical power and water; and (4) there was an abundance of cheap labor.

By mid-1945 there were three huge plants on the site, operating seven days a week, 24 hours a day, employing 82,000 people. The plants consumed 20 percent more electricity than New York City. At the peak of its growth, a new house was built in Oak Ridge every 30 minutes, and the bus system became the nation's sixth largest. In just three years, Oak Ridge grew from a sparsely populated rural area to the fifth largest city in Tennessee. Until 1949, no one over 12 years of age entered or left Oak Ridge without an identification badge. It was not until 1959 that the community voted to incorporate as a city. Today, Oak Ridge proudly embraces its origins as "America's Secret City."

Most of you know, of course, that the federal government created Oak Ridge to produce the plutonium for the atomic bombs that the United States used to end its war with Japan. The spare-no-expense and do-whatever-it-takes philosophy that led to the creation of Oak Ridge was the result of our country's war-time desperation to manufacture the atomic bomb before Germany did so, and to use it to end the war as quickly as possible. The development of Oak Ridge demonstrated what people are capable of doing when they are under attack.

Thankfully, due to the determination and sacrifices of a previous generation, the days of World War II are part of our distant past. In this time of peace and prosperity, it is hard to imagine a comparable event that might now focus and mobilize our nation with the intensity that led to the development of Oak Ridge and the atomic bomb. Yet, we clearly need that same kind of resolve today, because we face a daunting challenge that while less apocalyptic than World War II is also threatening to our youth and perhaps in the long term to our national security.

In the year 2000, it is the education of young adolescents that is threatened. It does not face the overt destructive force of missiles or tanks or infantry. No person and no group is consciously planning and orchestrating an attack against the education of our youth in the middle grades. Instead, the educational development of young people ages 11 to 15 is besieged by a set of complex but independent forces that do not array themselves in a frontal assault.

Their approach is indirect and the wounds they inflict are largely invisible; many of the casualties will not be apparent for years to come. The forces of attack are diffuse but operate in three divisions -- low expectations, ineffective instruction and leadership, and schools that resist reform. They have many allies. They are present in every community, indeed, in some communities more than others, and they are present in too many schools, but not in every classroom.

Am I being overly dramatic? Perhaps, but many people in this country believe we are in a war where the education of young adolescents is the battleground. In past decades, such a war would have been fought only by public schools, and it would have been the public schools' war to win or lose. But this is a new day in which other entities are not waiting to see how the public schools respond. Others are joining the fight, whether you want them to or not.

For example, experts estimate that by the beginning of the new school year, there will be nearly 2,000 charter schools in operation throughout the United States, serving approximately 500,000 students. Twenty percent of these will be charter middle schools, and 24 percent will serve both middle and elementary students. Many families are also fighting the battle by themselves through the use of home schooling. Researchers estimate that families are schooling a total of between 1.2 and 1.8 million children at home. And according to a recent report in the New York Times, the mayor of that city is exploring "the possibility of allowing private companies to manage some of the city's worst schools."

There is still more evidence of the accelerating movement to expand the educational options of families who have no alternative but to enroll their children in public schools serving their attendance areas. In a news article describing a recent United States Supreme Court decision, The Wall Street Journal reported: "Public money can be used to supply library books, computers and other teaching materials to religious schools, the Supreme Court ruled, giving a boost to school-voucher proponents and poking a hole in the wall separating church and state." If there is one thing you can count on, it is that in the coming months and years these trends will accelerate rather than diminish.

Choosing to fight

It remains to be seen who will gain the most ground in the war to increase the education outcomes of young adolescents, but those of you here today are certainly in the front lines. You have chosen to take a hard look at how your states and schools are educating youth in the middle grades, the achievement results you are producing, and the reforms you need to make to increase student performance.

This is a daunting task because many of you work in institutional and cultural contexts that make it difficult for you to carry out the tasks necessary to increase student achievement. Many of your bosses would like for you to produce better student achievement results, but few of them are supporting you to make the fundamental changes it will take for all students to perform at higher levels. Many of your principals and teachers are under tremendous pressure to raise test scores, but where is the intensive, sustained, high quality staff development they need to increase their knowledge of subject content and improve the effectiveness of their instruction? And, of course, few families are breaking down the schoolhouse doors demanding more challenging and engaging instruction for their children.

Many of your bosses would like for you to produce
better student achievement results, but few of them
are supporting you to make the fundamental changes
it will take for all students to perform at higher levels.

These difficulties lead some educators to conclude that the war is not worth the fight, that trying to reform public schools is like waging war in Vietnam; "waist deep in the big muddy," as a song of that era declared. That is why I am glad you are here. You have chosen to fight, knowing that there are major obstacles in your way, and that you do not have all the support you need to overcome them.

I imagine many of you have made this choice because of your deep commitment to the education of young adolescents in general, and, in particular to the students some of you teach every day. You are here to share and learn and think and plan because you know that your schools need to change to better educate the young people you care about so deeply. You are here because you want to provide the leadership your schools need to implement reforms that will increase student achievement. Thank goodness there are soldiers like you in the field.

The weapons at your command

We might say that one of the reasons you are here is to learn more about the weapons at your disposal. Given that the terrain over which you must fight is rugged and that the opposition is formidable, what can you use that will turn the tide?

Certainly, it is tremendous benefit to have the Southern Regional Education Board behind you. As an organization that has fought successfully for more than 50 years to improve education in the greater South, it has the experience and the knowledge to point you in the right direction. It can show you the booby traps of policy and practice that may look intriguing at first glance but which can explode into fragments of lost focus and wasted time. I urge you to listen to and learn from the SREB staff, and to trust and follow the advice and strategies they offer.

There is also a weapon that some educators perceive to be so formidable that they do not believe they can make it work. I refer to content and performance standards. Unfortunately, so many states and school systems have bungled the development and implementation of academic standards that they have badly damaged the credibility of standards. Under the headline, "Academic Standards Eased as Fear of Failure Spreads," the New York Times reported: "The states are acknowledging that, often because of financial concerns, they have not put in place the training programs for teachers, the extra help for students, and the other support necessary to meet suddenly accelerated standards. In some instances, they have also suggested that they may have expected too much, too soon."

Standards, however, are not the enemy. Fear of change is the enemy. Weak curriculum is the enemy. Lack of will and effort is the enemy. But standards are not the enemy. They can be a useful weapon. What makes the difference is how you think about standards and use them. Standards are not for the purpose of punishing students for their academic deficiencies. Standards are not an excuse for narrowing a teacher's instruction to prepare students to pass a high-stakes test. For the middle grades, the purpose of standards is to focus school systems, schools, teachers, students, and their families on understanding what students should know and be able to do by the end of the eighth grade. You can use standards to make clear to everyone the academic mission of the middle grades.

Standards are not the enemy. Fear of change is the enemy.
Weak curriculum is the enemy. Lack of will and effort is the enemy.

Yes, there are problems with the language and interpretation of standards. They do not come to you on a silver platter of clarity. But whether and how standards make a difference depends on how you respond. Do you passively accept or resist the standards, or put them on the shelf, or try to pound the square peg of your curriculum and instruction into the round hole the standards represent? Or do you try to understand the standards, deconstruct them to root out their meaning and implications, and reshape your curriculum and instruction in whatever ways are necessary to enable students to perform at standard? It is up to you to use standards to prompt discussion, reflection, and action about how schools, curriculum, instruction, assessment, and communications need to change to increase student learning.

Nearly every month, various organizations are publishing more and more materials to help you put standards to good use. For example, on the Internet you will find tools that will help you engage teachers and parents in understanding standards and their relationship to improving the quality of student work. At the website of the Collaborative Communications Group, there are materials written in plain English that schools can use to organize a "standards-based back-to-school night," or "an open house for parents to look at student work," or "a standards scavenger hunt." There is even an example of one school system's "standards-based report card" and information about how the school system developed it and the lessons the school system has learned from using the report card.

These tools are only one example of the many resources different organizations have developed specifically to help middle school educators make sense of and use standards. You can easily find many of these materials through the web site, MiddleWeb, that I hope you know about and are accessing and using on a regular basis. (See the "Standards-Based Classroom" issues of Changing Schools in Louisville and Long Beach.)


We need a better brand of professional development

There is another effective weapon you can use in the war to increase the academic performance of middle school students. It is a weapon many educators take for granted and abuse. It is a weapon that has great potential but it is often loaded with blanks. Educators euphemistically refer to it as "professional development," but in too many cases the people responsible for conceiving, organizing, and implementing it use staff development in ways that impede the development of professionalism and effective practices.

The Southern Regional Education Board's research has documented the region's desperate need for high quality professional development:

"Almost two-thirds of sixth-grade mathematics classes are taught by teachers with elementary majors."

"In eighth-grade science, two out of five classes are taught by teachers without a science major, and only 11 percent of science classes are taught by teachers who majored in a science content area such as biology, chemistry, or physics."

"In grade eight, 70 percent of the English classes are taught by teachers with a major in either elementary education or home economics education."

In addition to all this, there is the pervasive problem of low reading performance in the middle grades, and its ripple effect on student achievement in the core content areas. Very few middle school teachers have the knowledge and skills to attack this problem. (Here's a good guidebook on middle grades reading.)

Under these conditions, it is no wonder that so many middle school students are unable to perform at standard. How can we expect them to do so? Some people may think that a teacher's knowledge of subject content is not so important because they believe any reasonably literate and intelligent adult should be able to keep several steps ahead of the students. Some people may argue that any such adult should be able to know more than the students. I would simply ask those people if they would want such a teacher to be responsible for the education of their child, or their grandchild, or their niece or nephew. No, a teacher's knowledge of subject content matters, and it matters a lot. It has everything to do with how confident the teacher feels, how creative the teacher is able to be, and how effective the teacher is in engaging students in learning.

It is wrong to place on students the whole burden
for raising student achievement. That is like expecting
the non-military population to win the war.... To get significantly
higher levels of performance from students,
teachers will also have to perform at much higher levels.

But as the SREB data indicates, states, school systems, and schools have a massive adult remediation job to do. They have to both remedy the inadequate content preparation many teachers received in college, and they have to develop the teachers' skills and confidence as classroom managers and instructional leaders. This is a path that states, school systems, and schools have to take to increase student achievement.

They cannot wait on the reform of pre-service education. There are no shortcuts. It is wrong to place on students the whole burden for raising student achievement. That is like expecting the non-military population to win the war. Besides, placing a disproportionate burden on students will only yield incremental gains. To get significantly higher levels of performance from students, teachers will also have to perform at much higher levels.

Professional development is the means towards this end. But not just anything called "professional development" will do the job. We already know that many of the traditional types of staff development do not work. They do not increase teachers' knowledge of subject content, and they do not improve teachers' instructional effectiveness. These types of staff development waste money and waste teachers' time. They do not help teachers develop the specific, concrete knowledge and skills they need to increase student learning.

Nevertheless, the discredited and unproductive forms of professional development continue. They do not continue by accident. In every school system, in every school, someone, a specific person, makes a decision about the staff development a school system or a school will offer or support. It is these people who need to hear from leaders like you that the teachers you work with, and their students, cannot afford staff development in the future that is as ineffective as staff development has been in the past. If you do not do this, who will?

If you are part of the decisionmaking process about staff development, I urge you, I beg you, I plead with you to think deeply and critically about how to create staff development opportunities that will demonstrably increase teachers' subject matter knowledge and instructional effectiveness. I hope you will ask two very simple questions to judge whether a certain type of professional development deserves your support: Will it cause teachers' to perform more effectively in the classroom? Will you be able to see evidence that teachers are using what they have learned to cause students to perform at standard?

The people who make decisions about staff development, whether at the central office or school level, or those of you who want to influence those decisions, may need support and resources to help shape the professional development that will translate into increased student performance. For that, I encourage you to consider participating in the National Staff Development Council's annual conference that will be held in Atlanta later this year. I will be there, and I hope to see many of you there too. (See NSDC's national staff development plan.)


An arsenal of other weapons

There is an arsenal of other weapons available for your fight to help all students perform at significantly higher levels. However, everything depends on whether you choose to use these weapons and whether you use them correctly, which is to say, so they impact student achievement, or whether you use them incorrectly so they make little or no difference.

You have the weapon of data, and because of your participation in Making Middle Grades Matter, you will be blessed with an abundance of important and useful data and follow-up data. The availability of this data is a luxury, and your challenge is to use the data sooner rather than later to reform your schools, and make necessary but difficult changes in curriculum and instruction.

There is the weapon of teachers' collaborating to systematically examine and analyze student work. This process can help teachers better understand the links between what and how they teach, the assignments they develop and give, and how students perform in relation to standards. There is the weapon of rubrics, which can help students understand the levels of quality in their work and the goal of quality performance they can ultimately reach with practice and effort. The consistent use of rubrics can sharpen the thinking of teachers and students about the quality of student work teachers expect and the relationship between various levels of quality and the grades students receive. There is the multi-stage weapon of eliminating low level courses, fairly assigning students to classes so all students receive instruction of comparable quality, and going the extra mile to provide low-performing students with significantly more hours of higher quality instruction.

But perhaps the most effective weapon at your disposal is what people call "will." My dictionary lists nine definitions of "will" but I call two of them to your attention: (1) "The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action," and (2) "The power to arrive at one's own decision and to act upon it independently in spite of opposition." In terms of increasing student achievement, we might rephrase the definitions in the form of two questions: (1) "Do you really want to do it?" and (2) "Are you willing to do almost anything to get it done?"

Everything depends on how you answer these questions. No matter how effective the weapons are at your disposal, whether those weapons are money or time or strategies or methodologies or techniques or programs or projects, they will make no difference for students if you do not have the will to pick them up and use them effectively to increase student achievement. No weapon to improve student performance will jump into your hands and operate automatically. And no weapon is foolproof; all of them can be used carelessly and dangerously, and they often are. Everything depends on your will to find the weapons you need to increase student learning. Everything depends on your will to prepare yourselves and your colleagues to use those weapons effectively. You can start doing that at this conference, today.

Heroes, slackers and deserters

Each of you is here because in your respective states and school systems you are in the vanguard of educators who want to reform middle schools so they help students perform at standard. In any war, there are risks to being in the front lines. It is no different in the war to increase student achievement at the middle level. It takes courage to be among the first to step onto new ground. It takes will to break out of old, ineffective patterns of practice and to learn how to make the best use of promising new weapons for middle school reform.

The war to increase student achievement, as any war, will be messy and unpredictable. There will be advances and setbacks, but it will be necessary to press forward every day. In the war to increase student learning in the middle grades, as in any war, there will be heroes and slackers. There will also be deserters. This war, as other wars, will be won by the ordinary foot soldier who every day struggles over rugged and dangerous terrain to defeat the forces of low expectations, ineffective instruction and leadership, and resistance to reform. You are the foot soldiers.

But this war, as all wars, cannot be won by the individual soldier acting alone. Each person must fight hard, but battles can only be won by determined and brave soldiers working together as an organized unit, trusting each other, supporting each other, communicating with each other, and learning from each other. In your school systems and schools, people engaged in this fight have to work together to be successful. They may not love each other or even like each other, though that helps, but they do have to respect each other and work together as a unit, no matter what.

You are the foot soldiers. Your gallantry and your sacrifice may never receive the recognition you deserve, but this war cannot be won without you. I thank you for choosing to join the growing ranks of educators who are answering the call to more effectively educate young adolescents. I thank you for taking up arms to win this war, and not leave the fight to others.

Thank you.