Middle School Curriculum: Social Focus Yielding to Academics

Jay Matthews:

For two decades, policymakers have decreed that seventh grade should be a time when children have a chance to adjust to puberty and cliques and the other annoyances of turning 13. Lessons should be engaging and enriching, middle school advocates have said, but not put too much emphasis on mastering subject matter and passing difficult tests.

That attitude is changing, at Kenmore Middle School and in much of the rest of the country. Middle schools have "overemphasized emotional development at the expense of academic growth," said Mike Riley, superintendent of Bellevue, Wash., schools

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 6, 2005 8:42 PM
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