A National Survey of Middle School Effectiveness.

Abstract

T he middle school movement is one of the largest, most com prehensive efforts at educational reorganization in the history of Ameri can public schooling Only the dec ades-long school consolidation proc ess rivals it in terms of tine number of school districts and students involved. Each year more districts open newly reorganized middle schcxils as alterna tives to K-8, '-9. 7 -12. or other plans Although decreasing enrollments have spurred a decline in the overall num ber of all types of middle level schools in the l.'.S.. the number of identified middle schools continues to increase (NIE, 1983). The lack of consistency used to eval uate the effectiveness of middle school programs and the inconclusiveness of the available research prompted us to conduct our own study in the fall of 1983 We invited central office staff members and sch l administrators in 34 states to supply data about the effects of implementing middle school programs in their districts We developed a list of reputedly exemplary middle schools from schools identified by (1) the 1982 Study of Well-Disciplined Schools sponsored by Phi Delta Kappa, ( 2) the 1983 DOE National Secondary School Recognition Program, (3) a panel of ten persons recognized as experts in middle schtxil education, and (4) sev eral lists from books on middle school education. Of the schools we contact ed, 130 (81 percent) responded K cowrterv of Prtd Xewton. North Middle School. Fan CampML Ky