Student engagement drives students toward success or, if absent, a lack of engagement leaves students idling or even going in reverse. All good teachers know that more learning takes place when students are actually engaged in the curriculum. Yet, teachers often get so caught up in preparing students to pass the state's standardized tests that…

In this article, the author describes how middle schools can prepare young people for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. Integrating 21st century skills deliberately and systematically into middle school education will empower educators to accomplish many of the elusive goals they have tried to reach for years. Twenty-first…

In the last five years, a growing number of large, urban school districts have moved to close what are termed "troubled" 6-8 middle schools and have opened K-8 schools in their place: Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Newark, New Orleans, New York City, Oklahoma City, and Philadelphia have been among the first to do so. With a…

Many school systems have so much difficulty when it comes to educating students between the ages of 12 and 15. There seems to be perennial dissatisfaction with how public schools educate these "young adolescents." The grade configurations of schools varied, but the dominant pattern was eight years of primary school followed by four years of high…

The history of young adolescent education can be viewed as an ongoing search for the appropriate combination of school organization, curriculum, and instructional practices for young adolescents. While middle schools have now become the most common pattern for schools housing young adolescents, there have always been other broader school…

This article discusses a reading instruction applicable to widely diverse classrooms, because it weaves together dynamic strands from three approaches to teaching reading: literature circle method, reciprocal teaching, and modern literary theories. The author presents three stages to achieve reading success: (1) applying the key features of…

In the context of today's turbulent university life, public education debates, and highly charged political milieu, the phrase "middle school teacher education" might be said to describe a less-than-quiet target of opportunity for a whole host of groups who despise the values, meanings, and the central goals of the middle school movement and…