By John Norton
In 1989 the aptly named "Turning Points" report from the Carnegie
Council on Adolescent Development energized a national discussion about
"one of the most fascinating and complex transitions in the life span."
The influential report's wholistic approach included an examination of the
role of middle grades education in the healthy intellectual and personal
growth of young adolescents. The Council's concluding report, Great Transitions:
Preparing Adolescents for a New Century, was published in 1998 in conjunction
with an announcement from the Carnegie Corporation that it would turn its
attention to other pressing issues, including teacher education reform.
This fall, Teachers College Press will publish Turning Points 2000: Educating
Adolescents for the 21st Century, co-authored by Anthony W. Jackson,
a former Carnegie program officer who oversaw much of the Council on Adolescent
Development's work; and Gayle A. Davis, a faculty member at the University
of Maryland and former project director of the Middle Grade School-State
Policy Initiative.
In an interview, Jackson, now an executive with the Disney Foundation, talked
about the rationale behind Turning Points 2000 and reflected on the
likely future of foundation support for middle school improvement, in the
wake of the Carnegie Corporation's decision to shift its attention to other
priorities, and a recent announcement by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
that it will phase out its Program for Student Achievement, which has focused
entirely on middle grades reform.
What will Turning Points 2000 tell us about the issues of adolescence
that we would not learn from a rereading of the original Turning Points
report?
Several years ago, Gayle and I thought it would be very wise to prepare
a sequel -- a more fleshed-out version of the original Turning Points
report, based on the experiences of the last 10 years, both of the Carnegie
initiative and the results of other foundation-sponsored initiatives and
other middle grades reform work that took place over that period. In addition
to those experiences, we also are basing the book on a very comprehensive
review of research that has happened since the publication of the original
book -- research that relates to each of the components of the Turning Points
model. The book will be a much more detailed analysis of the Turning Points
model of middle school reform based on the practical experiences of those
who have been trying to implement the model and other middle grades reforms
over the last decade.
This book is being directly solely toward school implementation issues.
There will be some overlap with earlier reports on state policy, but this
is going to be much more drawn from the experience of middle school practitioners
and those who are in the school setting observing the work of practitioners.
We focus on what it takes to make change in individual schools that will
dramatically improve the achievement of young adolescents. It's a sequel
to Turning Points -- a much more expanded, detailed version.
Turning Points was a very good outline of the kind of changes that
needed to happen, and it was highly catalytic in its ability to raise consciousness
about the needs of young adolescents and the need for reform in middle grades
schools. But as a blueprint for reform, it really lacked the kind of detail
folks needed as they really got into the practical work of changing schools.
What we hope we have put together is a more detailed and sophisticated analysis
of what it takes to make middle grades reform really happen in a way that
produces high achievement for all young adolescents -- how various aspects
and elements of good middle grades education work together over time to
really produce the kinds of results we know are possible.
How would you describe the audience for Turning Points 2000?
We're gearing it -- our main concern is that it's written for and accessible
to practitioners in schools who actually want to change their schools in
a systematic way. So I guess the first audience is middle grades educators,
with a ripple effect that goes out from there, including people at the district
level and people who are interested in setting effective guidelines. We
hope it will also be of interest to scholars and other researchers. We also
hope it will be of interest to policymakers who are looking for a vision
of reform -- who want to anchor policy in a clear understanding of what
a good middle school really looks like and what it takes to make it happen.
My own view of a lot of policy work is that what is often missing is a clear
sense of exactly the kind of school we need and what it takes to do that.
We focus on the mechanics of school reform at the grassroots level, but
we think the book should have information for study and for policy as well
as for practical implementation.
As you look back at the impact of the first Turning Points report and
the ways in which the principles and recommendations played out in the context
of the school reform movement, what do you see?
There has been historically an overemphasis of the structural, organization
kinds of changes and a de-emphasis or lack of emphasis on actual changes
in teaching practice and the actual work of creating and implementing more
powerful forms of assessment and instruction and curriculum. I think that's
one of the key things we've learned: structural changes are important and
necessary but they are not sufficient. What I see is the really hardest
work in middle grades reform is figuring out what exactly is going to produce
the kind of high achievement we want to see in kids in terms of instruction
and the professional development of teachers. And then how those changes
can be coupled with and supported by organizational changes.
You can't take half-measures in changing a school. You have to, perhaps
not simultaneously but over time, you have to address all of the various
key elements of middle grades reform, from curriculum to organization to
relationships with parents to relationship with community, if you're really
going to have lasting, stable reform. Because each school is a system, and
like any system, if you only attack certain elements of it, the rest of
the system will pull those elements back into the status quo. Things will
regress to the mean. Over time, the school will naturally work to try to
preserve itself in its traditional form. So the need for comprehensive,
on-going, continually renewing reform is critical, with attention to all
those elements of a middle grades school that make it successful. You can't
go halfway -- you've got to go the whole way.
Why do you think that so many middle schools have paid more attention
to the Turning Points message about support for the healthy development
of adolescents and less attention to its message about the need to challenge
adolescents intellectually?
From the middle grades educator's standpoint, the issues that confront them
as soon as they walk in the door at the beginning of the school year are
the emotional and social needs of adolescents -- trying to help them through
this turbulent period. But I think what we have learned as a middle grades
community is that although those issues are important and you need to focus
on them, if they are the main thrust of our attention, we are way short
of what needs to happen to enable those kids to -- in the fullest sense
-- make the transition into older adolescence.
The transition through adolescence is not purely an emotional one; it's
as much, even more, an intellectual journey. And that's the key transition
that has to happen that we have not focused enough on in the past. It is
a period of enormous opportunity intellectually, and kids really need to
have the kind of stimulating education that is going to allow them to develop
their intellects and be able to use their minds well, which in turn is going
to have a tremendous effect on their capacity to negotiate the other kinds
of emotional and interpersonal aspects of adolescent development. So the
emphasis on adolescent needs is not misplaced, but it has perhaps been overemphasized
and now needs to be brought back into balance with the need to focus on
intellectual development. I think that's the lesson we're learning now and
I think that's what we're trying to point out.
My sense is that there is an undercurrent in the middle grades community
that recognizes this need for balance and the critical importance of intellectual
as well and social and emotional growth. It's one of the touchstones of
the second wave of middle grades reform. I sense much more focus on the
intellectual development of kids, and much more awareness about the intensity
with which they must address their own change process, and their need for
support in doing that.
I'm actually pretty optimistic that we can pull these different strands
of learning that we've gathered from experience and research together and
have, in the new millennium, a much more targeted and balanced approach
to high-quality middle grades education.
Where is philanthropy headed in regards to middle school reform?
That's an interesting question. I think one of the things that any of the
philanthropies that have been involved in middle grade work have learned
is that it does take a very comprehensive, systematic, and long-term effort.
We've all learned that you can kind of do pieces of that systematic effort
and make some success, but the real success comes from staying with a comprehensive
approach. I think there's a new realization among foundations that whole-school
reform is a long-term proposition that requires pretty to very intensive
work in most schools, and so if you're not willing to make that kind of
investment, it may not be worth doing. You're either in it for the long
haul in a way that is going to provide the kind of assistance they need,
or it's probably not worth doing.
Foundations have their own attention spans. So it isn't an unreasonable
thing to see a board of directors, after ten years of devoting resources
to a particular area, to begin to want to use resources in a different area.
If some foundations that have given support traditionally decide they have
to go in another direction, I hope at least those coming into the field
-- both foundations and education reform groups -- will learn from this
and will at least know from the outset how focus their grantmaking. I think
the key word here is "intensive." All of us can learn that it
is perhaps better to more narrowly define who we will work with -- to not
work with as many districts or schools but have them focus their attention
on a small number of grantees who can accomplish something in a reasonable
amount of time and get results for kids.
More to the point, the goal should be to create some examples or models
-- create some capacities that can be taken up by the systems themselves
as you're working in them. You can't, obviously, indefinitely support reform
efforts around the country -- there will never be enough philanthropic funds
for that -- they have to be catalytic dollars. I guess I hope that if there
are going to be philanthropies who invest in this work, they will all learn
from our experiences and have a more targeted and intensive effort and agenda.
That's the only way to get results.
During the 1990s, many foundations "ran their own experiments"
when it came to supporting school reform -- developing their own principles
and then funding grantees who were willing to provide "clinical trials."
Do you see that continuing?
There is another route that philanthropies can take, and that would be perhaps
to invest in organizations that are themselves able to mount the kind of
intensive effort that is needed. For example, the Center for Collaborative
Education in Boston is developing a "Turning Points" model for
the New American Schools. One way a philanthropy might want to go is to
invest in an organization like that that has the staff, the know-how, the
products, the capability to make comprehensive reform happen in a broad
number of cities and schools. The same thing might be said for the Talent
Development Schools model that Doug MacIver is doing (at Johns Hopkins University).
And I think there will be other models developed from some of the funds
the federal government is allocating around the country for comprehensive
school reform. So it may be that philanthropies want to get away from direct
investments in districts and move toward organizations that are really kind
of created and geared up to support comprehensive reform.
In a sense, it's a kind of a logical progression. You might consider the
work that Carnegie and Clark and Lilly and Kellogg and other foundations
have done as kind of spade work to generate a lot of examples, a lot of
experience, a lot of things tried. And what we're now in is a kind of second
stage of middle grades reform, where we are beginning to hone in on those
things that really make a difference -- learning from our experience --
and beginning to recognize the kinds of organizations that are in the best
position to carry this work forward.
Hopefully, Turning Points 2000 will be of some value to philanthropy
as they consider what is going to be necessary in the work of the grantees
you're going to support to really make achievement a reality over the long
term for middle grades students. In a sense, we hope it will provide a kind
of reality check about what is really required from grantees to get the
kind of outcomes that will justify the dollars invested -- what will really
have a high return on investment in terms of what's going to be best for
kids.
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