Santa Fe schools lose numerous students right after elementary–is it time to get rid of middle school?
At Ortiz Middle School, the children don't come in groups. They come in hordes. With a student body of nearly 700-making it the largest middle school in Santa Fe-Ortiz is a cauldron of squeaky voices, oily skin and growing pains.
Days at Ortiz start calmly enough. Student birthdays are announced over the loudspeaker. The Pledge of Allegiance is recited. Then the bell rings for first period. Kids bolt out of homeroom. Down the halls they come…and come…and come.
Journeying from one classroom to the next, a few students get smacked upside the head, a few get called names. But every student looks roughly the same as Raúl Serrano. The eighth grader is draped in the khakis and polo shirt all students are required to wear. He hates the standard dress code. "They don't allow us to express ourselves the way that we want to," he says. "We all look the same."
The cool students, the sticklers for style, find ways to stand out from the streaming masses-Dolce and Gabbana tennis shoes, interwoven gold chains and spiky, green hair.
On this particular Friday, the school has given a select group of students permission to skip the standard dress entirely-the cheerleaders. All legs and flowing hair, in their purple and teal uniforms the cheerleaders are the most visible bloc of Ortiz students. Because they have a competition in Albuquerque the next day, there will be an assembly in which the cheerleaders present their competition moves to the student body. The presentation won't take place until the very end of the day. But first thing in the morning it's clear the routine is what Raúl-who periodically eyes the cheerleaders-and his classmates anticipate most.
This is middle school. Here the social outweighs the academic. Conformity is not the exception; it is the rule.
But the response to Santa Fe middle
schools has been anything but standard when compared to national trends. Unlike other school districts around the country, Santa Fe Public Schools lose students between elementary and middle school at a high rate-there is an
approximate 20 percent enrollment drop between the sixth and seventh grades. This is the largest drop in the district between any two grades.
Fueled by fears about class size and safety, many area parents would just as soon the district eliminate middle school entirely, according to a recent survey. Subsequently, Associate Supt. Bobbie Gutierrez says, as the district moves to redistricting schools to accommodate growth, it may look at re-fashioning middle schools altogether.
Nonetheless, district officials believe parents' fears about middle schools are unfounded and say many of the students they lose return at the high school level. "I think parents who do come visit our middle schools find that many of their fears are unfounded," School Supt. Gloria Rendón says. "They find it is a good environment."
Of the four middle
schools in the district, Ortiz has the least number of highly qualified teachers and is the only middle school with a "Restructuring I" status. This means the State could opt to take over Ortiz because students have repeatedly failed to make adequate yearly progress on standardized tests. Many of Ortiz's students are poor and are learning English as a second language.
Yet at Ortiz, despite the State threat looming over it and the limitations of its size and resources, students often collaborate, tackle complex subjects and have access to a variety of arts.
Raúl Serrano says the
students he knows who left for private school were lagging academically. "If they would have focused," he says, "they would have done better here and stayed."
In a few months Raúl will be in ninth
grade. He hasn't thought
about college yet-he wants to be a car mechanic like his father and in his science class has had the opportunity to make a balloon-powered car. Today, in science, the task is to build a model volcano. This involves Play-Doh, flour and water,
among other materials. Initially animated, the students soon grow distracted. They bounce the Play-Doh on the floor. They taste the flour and water. A few minutes elapse before they focus. When one boy takes longer than this to start concentrating, a classmate reprimands him. "I'm, like, working here, something you should be doing," she snaps.
The students are grouped at eight different tables in the room. This is a team project. Ortiz students are accustomed to being in teams. Outside of the classroom, each
student has been divided among teams of teachers, a strategy SFPS uses at the middle school level to create a school-within-a-school setting. "It's more personal," Ortiz Principal Margo Shirley says. "Teachers get to know the kids. They have a personal planning time and that allows us to discuss curriculum and meet with students and their families. Teams are really designed for the children."
Teams in large public schools help simulate the smaller academic environment actually offered at private schools.
For example, Desert Academy has
45 students in its middle school-some classes have as few as five students in them.
Desert's small classes allow for college-like discussions that render hand raising-and other procedures used to avoid disruption in Ortiz's large classes-unnecessary. The furniture in Desert's classrooms is even situated to induce conversation. While Ortiz students sit in desks for most of the day, Desert students often sit at tables teachers have placed into U-shapes. If not at tables, Desert middle schoolers sit in chairs arranged in circles.
Though the smallness of Desert is
felt in classrooms, it is also felt throughout the school. "I see my students about four or five times a day," Ray Griffin, Desert's head of school and a teacher there, says. "You see the kid for breakfast, lunch and dinner and
math and at the track meet. It's like you're raising the kid in a village."
In hallways, in the cafeteria, in school offices, everyone moves at a pace that feels leisurely when compared to Ortiz.
At Ortiz, the swift movement of bodies generates a kind of hum, akin to the sound heard in any freeway-laden part of Los Angeles. The object in the school's congested hallways is to avoid contact-bumping into someone, looking too closely into another's eyes-an assembly line mentality. It was part of the reason Lyra
Barron took her daughter Joy out of another Santa Fe public middle school. "They had only four minutes to go to their lockers, to the bathroom, to their classroom," she says. When Joy received three tardies, the district assigned her a truancy officer and said she would have to go before a judge if she received any more. "It felt like we were criminals," Barron says.
"Big schools are really viewed as the factory model in educational literature," Griffin says. "Bells ring. Lights go on and off."
Today's social
studies topic has great meaning for Raúl. On the board
it says: "Do you think New Mexico should start a Minutemen Project on its border? Explain why or why not." In writing about the Arizona vigilantes who have joined together to keep migrants from crossing the US border, Raúl is adamant
the project should not branch out here. He tells Brett Hawkins, his social studies teacher, that Mexicans journey to the US for work that will support their families.
Raúl was born in Chihuahua, Mexico and arrived in California as a toddler. At one point his family literally straddled the border, with some relatives in the US and others in Mexico. Eventually, the family all made it to the US and settled in this state. Raúl's life has improved in stages in this country. At first his family lived in an apartment, he says. Then, they moved into a house. At present, they own acres of land.
As a student Raúl is exemplary, but as an immigrant he is part of a growing trend in the district, one that has clearly impacted Ortiz's academic standing. Approximately 40 percent of the students there are learning English as a second language, presumably because they come from immigrant families.
It's not just Ortiz. The district, since 1997, has experienced a sevenfold increase in the number of students learning English as a second language. Nonetheless, Rendón believes this factor does not play into the exodus from the public middle schools, saying the trend pre-dates the influx of immigrant students to the district.
But Ricky
Lee Allen, a professor in the University of New Mexico's College of Education, says when there's a sizeable departure of students from schools, issues of race and national origin may be at hand. For example, he says, after schools were integrated in the 1960s and 1970s there was an influx of white children into private schools.
"They may not say
they're taking their children out of school because of these issues," Allen says. "They'll say they're concerned about the quality of education or the quality of teachers."
Now that his family has cornered the American dream, Raúl refuses to shun those who seek the same dream solely because they're south of the border. Raúl knows what it's like to be shunned-to not quite fit in-and it's not because he's an immigrant.
"Everyone tells me I'm smart," says
Raúl, who was disappointed to have two Bs appear on his last report card (the rest were As). Because they consider him a brainiac, Raúl says classmates call him "schoolboy." His response to the nickname is to shrug it off with a "whatever." But it's not as simple as that. Being distinct in any manner-other than having cool clothes or being good-looking, perhaps-usually means embarrassment for a middle school student. This is the case even if the distinction is positive. For example, after discovering that Raúl is the subject for this article, a pair of girls look at him and sigh, "He's so lucky." Later a boy announces to the class, "Hey, [the media is] following Raúl around." Raúl does not bask in the attention. He squirms.
There is a uniformity at Ortiz
that extends beyond the uniforms students have been required to wear for the last few years. The students all share brown skin, brown hair, brown eyes.
In contrast, at a school like Desert, many students have hair so sun-bleached they nearly glow. But there are also dark-haired students. Hispanic students, Asian students, black students, biracial students. To boot, the standard dress at the school-jeans and T-shirts-is student selected rather than administration selected.
This diversity seems to mean
that students who don't fit in in public school may find greater acceptance in private school.
As early as fifth grade in
Santa Fe Public Schools, Isabel Madley began squirming because her high marks distinguished her from peers. In middle school, the squirming intensified. Because she was one of the smartest students in her class, "people either thought I was a total dork or that I was really annoying," she recalls. Isabel's mother, Christine Madley, says, "I know that she is a really enthusiastic
kind of student. But she has felt she was thought of as an uncool person because she liked to learn. She got hostility aimed at her; she got resentment."
Thriving academically wasn't enough compensation for feeling like a social misfit. Thus, Isabel visited Desert Academy. "I really liked it because the kids really tried to include me. They didn't act like I was annoying," she says.
While Santa Fe students may leave public school for a variety of reasons, most
share a lack of preparation for the transition from elementary school. Al Summers, director of professional development at the National Middle School Association, says that effective middle schools adopt transitional programs to "begin
work with elementary schools long before middle school, so children and their parents understand what to expect and get to know the [middle] school and the teachers." At present, SFPS has no district-wide policy aimed at such a transition. "Principals are encouraged to welcome [elementary school students] into middle schools, but it's up to principals to decide how they want to do that," SFPS Spokeswoman Ruthanne Greeley says.
At Ortiz, Principal
Shirley has attempted to create that transition from elementary to middle school. For the past three years, students from Sweeney and Chavez elementary schools have had a designated day at the end of the year to visit Ortiz. But the scores of calls Shirley receives from parents of soon-to-be middle schoolers have impelled her to do more. During a week in May, parents of prospective students will be able to drop by Ortiz, Shirley says. This marks the first time the school has scheduled a period for future parents to visit. Additionally, DeVargas Middle School also scheduled an open house next month for elementary school students and their parents.
But what parents appear to want is an end to middle school. In a February survey, 800 of the 1,100 parents who responded said they supported having a kindergarten through eighth grade
option versus the middle schools that separate out either sixth through eighth or seventh through eighth grades, depending on the school. According to Associate Supt. Bobbie Gutierrez, one parent wrote: "I have applied to St. Mike's, but, if there were a K-8 option, I would consider it over private school."
Summers, however, says there's no conclusive data regarding the best grade configurations for children ages 10 to 14 and each configuration has its drawbacks. Students in a K-8 model may have teachers who treat them more like elementary school kids than pre-adolescents. On the flip side,
students in the 7-12 model, popular at many private schools in Santa Fe, may have teachers who treat them too much like mature teens. Other configurations include
the 7-8 models found at Capshaw, Alameda and DeVargas Middle Schools, and the 6-8 model, found at Ortiz Middle School.
What is conclusive is the importance of these years. The middle school years not only mark a time of physical and mental transition but the period in which students solidify future educational plans. By eighth or ninth grade, the majority of students have already decided whether to pursue a college degree. And middle school provides students with the study skills needed to succeed in high school and make it to college. Inversely, students decide whether they will drop out of high school based on educational experiences that have occurred prior to ninth grade.
According to Summers, teachers have more influence over the scholastic success of 10- to 14-year-olds than whether they're placed in schools with older or younger children or switch classrooms during the day. "These kids need teachers well-trained to deal with young adolescents," he says. "There are more changes in the brain and the body in middle school than at any other time in your life except birth through age 3."
Initially, Raúl wanted a cheeseburger for
lunch
but opted for
pizza instead. Oil seeps from the cheese and pepperoni as it does the egg rolls and fried rice
his friends have selected. Salad and fruit cocktail also are on the menu, but the kids skip those items. Dissimilarly, none of the kids rejects the chocolate milk served to wash the grease down. And none of the kids goes outside to play. They linger in the cafeteria for the entire lunch period, allowing calories to accumulate.
When the bell sounds, Raúl heads to band. He plays trumpet. But the trumpet section cannot seem to hit the right notes and has to rehearse the same portion of music again and again until perfection falls in reach.
The outcry about the lack of arts in
school does not apply to Ortiz. Besides band, the school offers electives in guitar, chorus, mariachi and art, among others. Also, as part of its after-school program, Ortiz offers a course in hip-hop opera. But while Ortiz excels in the arts, it lacks entirely in foreign language.
Spanish is the only language
offered, as is the case at all of the district's middle schools. Greeley says the district doesn't have the resources to offer more than one foreign language at the middle school level.
In contrast, at Desert Academy, middle school students take a course in which they acquaint themselves with Latin, Chinese, Spanish and French. After taking this language sampler class of sorts, Desert learners decide upon a language to pursue for a course of study.
Raúl does not study Spanish as a
foreign language. Math is his final subject of the day and in the last class of the last day of the school week students act accordingly antsy. Rather than sitting at their desks straightaway, the children huddle in corners, giggling and chatting. Some actually make it to their desks but
can't bring themselves to sit. Instead, they stand near them, fidgeting and eavesdropping on classmates.
Raúl is one of the
few pupils who plants himself down but-half out of his seat, half in it-is as jittery as the rest. The students' agitated nerves stem not just from the fact that when the next bell sounds, they will be free from Ortiz for the weekend, but that first they must take a test. The good news is that they can take the test in groups. The bad news is that if they fail to finish in time, they will miss the long-awaited cheerleading assembly.
The thought of
missing the cheerleaders scares the students into stillness and sitting alike. Together, they focus. Like hitmen, the students knock off each question with no motivation but to keep knocking them off until they've landed their reward.
They finish testing just when the assembly is scheduled to begin. Inside the gymnasium, Raúl waits on the bleachers with hundreds of other students for the cheerleaders to appear. Before long, the squad comes out. They dance to the same set of synthesized
beats favored by cheerleaders everywhere. But the dancing is not one
of the routine's highlights. A highlight is when the squad breaks into a pair of clusters and flings two girls high in the air. With this, the crowd leans forward. Will the squad catch the girls? If not, will they go splat as they hit the floor? The squad catches the two human rockets. Relieved, the crowd leans back. The routine ends.
But there's a problem. Minutes remain until the last bell. The faculty has no idea what to do with the hundreds of students sitting before them. Send them back to class? Let them stay? Fearing the already revved-up students will lose control, the faculty makes a quick proposition. "Do you want to see the cheerleaders again?" Presented the option, the students demand an encore. "Yes! Yes!"
The cheerleaders reappear. The students react with oohs and ahs and shrieks. They behave graciously, as if they haven't just seen the routine, as if the adults had known just what to do with them.
