But I think the future is bright, and I'll give you two reasons why.
1) I haven't been teaching very long (next year will be 11 years as a teacher and 14 as a coach), but I don't see a radical change on the horizon that is going to change the structure or alignment of American public schools. Sure, we might shift things around within the walls, but the actual middle school is going nowhere.
2) I think the fact that all schools are focusing on test results has a positive side to go along with all of the negatives we have mentioned over the course of the class. Sure, we are teaching to the test. Sure, we are losing valuable instructional time to assessment. It is all true. But...when school administration heightens their awareness of test scores, they will be loosening their grip on the antiquated "traditional classroom." If they want the best results, they have to use the best practices. So if integrating classrooms yields higher test scores, it will happen. If creating teams and portioning out more common planning time results in higher scores, it will happen. If adult advocates help boost the school climate, and that makes kids safe, and that increases scores, well then that will happen too.
The future of middle level education is a great one. This will continue to be a challenging age for kids, and a time where they will need tremendous support. However, this will also be span where kids will be as unique and diverse as they can be.
Sam, I think you are right. Maybe all the testing push isn't completely negative. It makes teachers and schools accountable for hiring the most qualified teachers and it does force us to use best practices.The other positive quality that I see is the "road map" that the standards provide. We all know that class discussions can get very off topic rather quickly, as can integrated units and large projects. These standards give us some guidelines to serve as a starting point and then benchmarks that we must hit along the way. Either way, there has always been some type of standard for education so we must make it work with best practices.
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