The middle school years are a time of transition and turbulence. Given the changes and pressures facing these almost-adolescents and newly-minted teenagers, it's no wonder that middle schools have been called the “Bermuda Triangle of education” – a place where it's easy for students and educators alike to lose their bearings. In New York City, the academic performance of middle schools has been a concern for more than two decades. The academic performance of elementary and high school students has shown considerable improvement in recent years, but their middle-school counterparts have not kept up. In 2007, fewer than half of the city’s eighth graders tested at grade level in math and reading. And just 27 percent and 40 percent of eighth graders met the state standards for social studies and science, respectively.

Alarmed by this trend, a group called the Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) published a report in January that called for a “Marshall Plan” to address the persistent problems of middle schools in New York. Two months later, in response to the CEJ report – as well a new reorganization plan for the city’s public schools, unveiled by Mayor Bloomberg the day after the report’s release, that would place unprecedented responsibility on principals to raise achievement – City Council Speaker Christine Quinn convened a Middle School Task Force to explore solutions to those problems. Over the next several months, the two dozen members of the task force visited middle schools throughout the city and held a public forum in each borough to solicit input from parents, teachers, administrators and various school experts.

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On August 13 the task force released a report containing nearly 40 recommendations on topics ranging from curriculum to school safety. At a press conference that day, Mayor Bloomberg, alongside Quinn, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, and several task force members, announced that the city Department of Education would make $5 million available to 50 high-need middle schools in order to implement the task force’s recommendations. Beginning this fall, the city will waive fees for professional development for teachers and will begin expanding Regents-level courses at those high-need schools. The focus will be on the high-need schools at first, but the goal is to gradually implement the recommendations citywide. These steps will be overseen by a newly appointed Director of Middle School Initiatives – Lori Bennett, former instructional superintendent for Region 8 in the Bronx – who will continue to receive input on the city’s middle schools from a working group that will include task force members.

The week of the press conference, City Limits sat down with Dr. Pedro Noguera, the chairman of the task force and a professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education.

CITY LIMITS: What did you think of the press conference?

PEDRO NOGUERA: The press conference focused on the positives – on the fact that the report is out, that there’s a high degree of agreement between the speaker, the chancellor and the mayor about the content and the recommendations, and a willingness to try to implement them. I think there was a lot of good faith demonstrated at the press conference, and that was made possible by the negotiations leading up to it. So I think that’s a good thing.