Wednesday, November 8, 2000
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Wednesday, November 8, 2000 |
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Panel ponders future middle school changes By PAT NEWMAN
The state-mandated overhaul of middle schools has triggered Fayette County to appoint a commission to assess how proposed changes will affect local students. Stuart Bennett, Fayette County's assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, reviewed the complex changes facing middle schools at a community roundtable last week. "The most significant progress to date is the school system's decision "not to cut physical education, to allow band, and provide a minimum of one health and one PE," Bennett said. "We need to keep academics strong and meet the needs of students," he added, noting the special social, psychological and emotional needs of middle school-age youth. "Their needs really are different," Bennett said, comparing them to their elementary and high school counterparts. While educators are fighting to keep the middle school model of sixth, seventh and eighth grade, which was adopted in Georgia during the 1989-90 school year, the governor's A Plus Reform Plan changes the way the state funds middle schools. "The middle school rule is, if you get middle school funding, you do this," Bennett explained. The first change to be put in place next year (2201-2002) is the reduction in teacher planning time from the current 110 minutes to 85 minutes. The following year, planning schedules may be reduced to 55 minutes. "With 55 minutes of planning time, you have a high school day set up," Bennett said. Fayette County's middle schools rank in the state's top 5 percent. The need to focus more on academics and instructional time is not as imperative here as it is in other counties, which may have high percentages of eighth graders failing in their first year of high school, Bennett said. One way the state recommendations hope to "beef up" academics, according to Bennett, is to add more teachers to middle school "teams" and push for teacher content certification. Each middle school student is part of a team that includes three to four teachers who meet and now spend about three hours a week on common planning time, going over the needs of the students, Bennett said. "That's where the rub comes," he added, noting the four and a half to five hours of state-prescribed academic time. Middle school teams now control their own time, using an interdisciplinary approach to work with the total needs of the students, Bennett said. "It works if you allow it to work... if you don't mess with the formula," he said. Asked what the atmosphere was like at the state meetings dealing with these proposed changes, Bennett responded, "One word confusion. All we've kicked off in this state is confusion." What are the main objectives? "The objectives, we think, are to make sure the academics are being covered, and to have exploratories that are QCC- [Quality Core Curriculum] driven, not fluff, and to prepare students for high school," Bennett said. "We are going to have strong middle schools," he added, "and not reinvent the wheel to do it." The next roundtable session, date to be announced, will discuss school councils and how they will be implemented.
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