Articles

Article 1:
"Proficiency is Not Enough" by Carol Ann Tomlinson, commentary published in the November 6, 2002 issue of Education Week .

Article 2:

Thoughts on The War Against Excellence: The Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America's Middle Schools, Cheri Pierson Yecke, (2003), Westport, CT: Praeger.

Vincent A. Anfara, Jr.

With an initial read, one could easily be impressed by what appears on the surface to be a well-reasoned, cogent, and evidence-based argument that there is a rising tide of mediocrity in America's middle schools. In the style of A Nation at Risk, the rhetoric of this book is intended to emotionally engage and incite the reader to action against radical middle school activists (i.e., Paul George, John Lounsbury, etc.). According to Yecke, these activists had non-academic and anti-intellectual intentions as they viewed middle schools as laboratories for social experimentation. Their aims were to infuse in young adolescents the values of radical equity, group rights, and coercive egalitarianism. In writing this book, Yecke engages in the very Hegelian plot she accuses radical middle school activists of employing. She does this, though, utilizing poor research skills that result in over-exaggeration, misrepresentation, and faulty claims and conclusions.

A closer examination of Yecke's work reveals some very serious flaws in her logic and scholarship. Ranked first among these shortcomings is the fact that there are no data presented in this book. Her primary claim is that the middle school philosophy and practices (specifically cooperative learning, peer tutoring, and heterogeneous grouping) have had significant negative effects on gifted and talented students. But no data are presented to establish this as a fact. No data are presented on the effects of cooperative learning, peer tutoring, or heterogeneous grouping on the academic achievement of middle grades students. No data (beyond the opinion of one education professor at Virginia Wesleyan) are given to support the claim that preservice middle level teachers are an inferior lot when compared to those entering elementary or secondary education. The list of claims that are unsubstantiated with data seems to be endless.

Instead of trying to make her case with empirical data, she relies on: (1) the 1982 version of This We Believe, (b) the 1989 edition of Turning Points, (c) the content of NMSA program descriptions from 1974-2001 and Middle School Journal articles, (d) a very limited amount of anecdotal data, and (e) inappropriately using quotes, out of context, from middle level researchers to support her position. Using the 1982 version of This We Believe, Yecke constantly reminds her readers of the fact that the theory of brain periodization was once embraced by NMSA. Forget about the fact that subsequent versions of This We Believe have been published and that NMSA has changed its position on this matter. Yecke found something back in 1982 that aroused her interest and she relentlessly drives this point home. She attacks Turning Points (1989) for its anti-intellectual focus and for manufacturing a crisis that focused on young adolescents and their educational needs. Turning Points 2000, for all practical purposes, does not exist according to Yecke's research. There are two lines at the end of the book that reference it. Interestingly, one of these lines notes that while the focus of Turning Points 2000 is more academic than the original Turning Points, this amounts to little more than lip service to academics. She holds NMSA responsible for the content of every session presented at its annual conferences and for the content of every article published in MSJ, as if NMA officially endorsed these. Interestingly, there are no references to Research in Middle Level Education Quarterly, Annual, or Online . References to September 11, 2001 and United Flight 93 are inexcusable. She implies that if passengers on that flight would have gone to middle schools they would not have had the competitiveness to overpower the hijackers (see p. 157) and the results would have been far different.

In addition to these flaws, Yecke relies on faulty assumptions. She assumes that all schools that have "middle school" as part of their name have adopted the middle school philosophy and are employing the practices she attacks as harmful to gifted students. She assumes that organizations like NMSA cannot learn and grow, thus changing their official positions on such issues like brain periodization. Yecke assumes that there is a singular purpose of schooling (purely academic) which everyone in America agrees upon, except, of course, those middle school radicals. She obviously has not been introduced to the fact that there are competing perspectives (functionalism, conflict/critical theory, interpretivist) on the purpose of schooling. She assumes that you cannot have developmental appropriateness and academic rigor linked; that parents across this nation do not agree with the middle school philosophy which has been imposed on them against their will; and that the effects of peer tutoring, cooperative learning, and heterogeneous grouping are a zero-sum game when comparing gifted students to all other students.

While we can easily reveal flaws in logic, faulty assumptions, and bad research, it must not be forgotten that this book is part of a larger attack sponsored by ultra-right and ultra-conservative groups on colleges of education, NCATE, and the like. Yecke periodically takes time off from attacking NMSA and turns her attention to these other organizations. After all, according to Yecke colleges of education (filled with left-wing radicals) are in the business of training our next generation of middle school activists who will perpetuate the social experiment of middle schools that has resulted in an emphasis on radical equity, group rights, and coercive egalitarianism. One will note that the forward to the book has been written by William J. Bennett and that endorsements on the back cover are from Chester Finn, Lisa Graham Keegan, and Michael Poliakoff. We must not forget that these people are working in concert to achieve goals consistent with their ideological stance.

Writing this brief review was a struggle in the sense that responding to the ideas in this book seems to imply that they have some credibility and legitimacy. To respond or not to respond—that was the dilemma. I can only hope that readers will see The War Against Excellence for what it really is—bad research filled with exaggerated and unsubstantiated claims and empty attacks.

Vincent A. Anfara, Jr. is associate professor of educational administration and policy studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.