ENDORSEMENTS

This lucid and passionate book does two great services for today’s education policy debates. It shows - and explains - the extent to which American education has shamelessly turned “giftedness” from a blessing and asset into an embarrassing mark of “elitism.” And it begins the overdue task of unmasking the “middle school” for what it has all too often become: not an educational institution where children learn important skills and knowledge, but a social engineering vehicle that attends endlessly to dogma and dreamy notions while teaching very little. That turns out to be particularly damaging to the ablest of our children, on whom so much of our future will depend.
Chester E. Finn, Jr.
President, Thomas B. Fordham Foundation

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Cheri Yecke has made a profoundly important contribution to education policy research. Her meticulously documented study exposes the ongoing threat to the academic achievement of middle school students. She chronicles the destructive agenda of social hygienists and educational theorists to put a glass ceiling on student achievement in the name of an equity of mediocrity. And it shows what parents and policymakers can do to protect the integrity of this nation’s public education.
Michael Poliakoff
President, National Council on Teacher Quality

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Parents and the public have been led to believe that middle schools are needed to fit schooling to preteen developmental needs and thereby maximize each child’s potential. Instead, leaders of the middle school movement have promoted teaching practices that sacrifice the interests of gifted students to an egalitarian vision of schooling -- a vision that achieves fairness by bringing everyone to the lowest common denominator.

Parents and policymakers often endorse educational innovations without any real understanding of how or whether they work. With regard to the middle school movement, however, they can read the War Against Excellence and judge for themselves.
Dr. John E. Stone
Professor, East Tennessee State University
President, Education Consumers ClearingHouse & Consultants Network

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Cheri Yecke offers a chilling yet accurate account of how an army of elite educators can successfully manufacture an adolescent crisis that resulted in the flawed middle school concept. That concept, by every measure, has failed our students and shortchanged their abilities.
Jeanne Allen
President, Center for Education Reform

 

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COMMENTS

There are many teachers fighting for better performance at the Middle and High School levels and your book has helped move us away from the "heretic" and "dissenter" labels. It's so nice when we can refer to people like you when we try to force school administrators to face common sense.

I just thought you'd like to know that your book has helped us feel that we aren't the only "crazy" people out there demanding proof before instituting educational "reform."

Andy Moore
English Teacher
Salem High School
Salem, MA 01970                                   ...More