Teaching Middle School Social Studies: Who is at Risk?. (2001)

THE LABEL AT-RISK remains problematic, particularly when it is applied to children from social groups that have been traditionally marginalized in society. We recognize that labeling children as of not doing well academically because of their social background may promote a blame-the-victim mentality in schools. We believe a more productive approach to the problem consists in the critical examination of the confluence of school culture and students' home cultures. Questions to consider in this process include: What culturally biased curricular, instructional, or organizational obstacles does the school place in the learning paths of youngsters? How do the school and individual teachers respect and build on students' home cultures? How do teachers help students who are learning English as their second language (ESL learners) and students from impoverished settings learn the skills necessary for success in mainstream American society? When we began to consider all the categories of that must be taken into account, we concluded that, in fact, all children may be at risk of academic failure-not just those whose factors have been identified. Given the unexpected situations, conditions, and powerful negative influences students may encounter during the critical years of middle school, even those whom we consider not to be at risk could become so in a heartbeat. For this reason, it is necessary for educators to be concerned with all students in middle school. Is it possible that Manuel, who speaks no English yet, is gibed? That Mason is behind in school not because she's a slow learner, but because she's alienated from authority figures and therefore resists their expectations? That quiet, studious Samuel may be struggling with all sorts of emotional trauma after the school day is over? Middle level learners were the subject of an important report released by the Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development in 1989. Titled Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century, this document urged schools to enable every middle school student to complete the core academic program successfully and to hold to the principle that all children can be academically successful given appropriate conditions, encouragement, and opportunities.(1) The Carnegie report on adolescent development differed from earlier pronouncements in stating that middle level learners need special conditions, forms of encouragement, and opportunities that are distinct from those needed by younger or by older children. The middle school years were described as a unique period in an individual's development that must be treated uniquely. This was a divergence from earlier thinking in which the individual develops from child to adolescent to adult with a brief, rather ungainly but otherwise inconsequential transition period between childhood and the teenage years. The Carnegie report emphasized that a number of middle level-appropriate teaching strategies will benefit all students, yet these often continue to be reserved only for the successful students: cooperative learning; service learning; inquiry and analytical learning; and historical (and multicultural) perspective-taking. The report further suggested a number of practices that are not appropriate for optimal learning for all middle-school students: tracking or ability grouping by classes, called of the most divisive and damaging school practices in existence(2) (yet still pervasive among middle schools, even though they are divided into teams); 45- to 50-minute classes that are scheduled inflexibly; and basing grouping and instructional practices on the assumption that students who experience difficulty in one subject will also struggle in others. The Carnegie report, along with other research and theory undergirding the middle school movement, such as that of Eccles and Midgley,(3) provided the basis for the subtle changes in performance expectations from level to level in the national social studies standards, Expectations of Excellence: Curriculure Standards for the Social studies (4). …