Customer Reviews

The War against Excellence: The Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America's Middle Schools

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This is one scary book. Its disturbing message: our middle schools (and presumably, schools at other levels), under the influence of a well-intentioned but pernicious social engineering philosophy, have sacrificed high academic standards, and thwarted the intellectual development of our brightest, highest achieving youngsters.

The author, a mother of schoolchildren frustrated by her dealings with education experts, decided to become one herself. Yecke obtained a doctorate in education to find out why the middle schools were holding back "gifted" students like her own, instead of enabling them to advance as far as their intellects permit.

Her conclusion is that there has been a "radical takeover of middle schools" manifested by three policies: "heterogeneous grouping" (mandating classes of mixed ability; grouping by intellect prohibited), "cooperative learning" (breaking classes into small groups with collective responsibility for work) and "peer tutoring" (smarter students forced to teach the less bright). Yecke carefully documents the sources and evolution of the ideas behind these policies. She persuasively argues that the cumulative effect has been to retard the education of the best students, while dumbing down the curriculum overall.

Yecke is fairly optimistic that the academic standards movement will reverse the mediocrity tide. She asserts that the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind policy, which she sees as a "standards-based reform," is "remaking the educational landscape." However, the Wall Street Journal recently reported that No Child Left Behind is encouraging schools to shift resources away from gifted students in order to meet overall student proficiency requirements. Obviously, whether or not Dr. Yecke's optimism is justified remains to be seen.

It is clear, however, that something must be done to, in Yecke's words, foster a "rebirth of respect for achievement." Schools - and colleges - should be emphasizing the transmission of knowledge, the accumulated wisdom of our (and other) civilizations. They should be enabling our youth to learn as much as they can as fast as they can. When we read the words of a principal (!), who tells us that "When we come to the realization that not every child has to read, figure, write and spell . . . then we shall be on the road to improving the junior high curriculum," we know that something is decidedly wrong.

Cheri Pierson Yecke has done a great service by pulling together the middle school activists' central policy prescriptions and their supporting arguments and exposing them. Although she has focused on one sector of the K-16 structure, it is obvious that "the war against excellence" has battlefronts at more than one level of the educational system.

Should education be a great leveler, or rather a place where proclivity and genius is recognized and encouraged as an asset to the future of the community, state, and nation? This author asked herself the question and felt so strongly about her deliberations that she wrote this highly informative treatise. Her voice is impassioned and rational, a combination often not found together, and it makes her assertions quite convincing indeed.

The rise of standarized testing may make the issue a moot point, however, as schools in competition with one another for federal funds and the high regard of parents may no longer be so 'progressive' about how they manifest the dubious need to socialize their students. They will perhaps begin to see through the mist of the educationally cloudy 90's that the best way to make a student feel good about himself is to instill knowedge in him, and that the best way to socialize a student is to allow her to learn the rewards of hard work and the consequences of being a slacker.

This work was needed and is serving as a spearhead into the misguided folly of middle school philosophy. Read it!

Other books have reviewed the decline of education in American with a broad general view. Cheri Pierson Yecke focuses on the middle school movement over the last 30 plus years, and how many facets of the middle school movement have hurt specifically the talented and gifted children, but also children in general. She does a great job in reviewing various pieces of the middle school change. She has hundreds of footnotes; many of them are as interesting as the main text of the book.

The author starts off with a historical perspective of education and then covers how recently there has been a push to change to a K-5, middle school, and high school structured approach. The motivation of many behind the middle school movement has been a desire to "fix" society. Historically education has meant learning how to read, write, and how to do math. Many in the middle school movement wanted to do social engineering. Instead of trying to teach each student as much as the child could learn, the middle school radicals have pushed for equal outcomes. This is in direct contrast to what advocates for the talented and gifted want.

Over time many of the middle school radicals have become hostile to the needs and interests of the talented and gifted. Cheri Pierson Yecke acknowledges that this was one of the main motivations for her going back to school and get a PhD, to try and understand why the needs of her own children were not being meet.

Chapter three was on how the middle school curriculum has been dumbed down, so everyone can pass the same course. Next was a chapter on "Ability Grouping" and how the middle school movement has fought "Ability Grouping" as being elitist.

The next chapter was about "Cooperative learning" which has small groups of children working together. This may be a good idea once in awhile, but the middle school movement does a lot of it. Cooperative learning advocates defend it by saying it is good for the gifted, but by and large the gifted students find it a waste of time. The gifted students often end up doing a lot of the work, and the rest of the group gets a free ride, or the gifted student doesn't contribute, and the group suffers. In effect the gifted students is being forced to be a teacher's assistant. This is explored even more in the chapter on "Peer tutoring." For me a very key part of the problem is the gifted students, at a young age, are being forced to teach those who don't want to learn. Mature adults may be able to find reasonable solutions, but most young children often find this an impossible situation to deal with.

Chapter seven does some analysis of the beliefs and driving convictions of those pushing the middle school movement. Based on what they say publicly Cherie Pierson Yecke finds that many of them want equal outcomes. Rather than having a level playing field where everyone has an equal chance to succeed, the middle school radicals want coercive egalitarianism, they want to force everyone to be the same. Chapter eight points out that often to implement their goals they will hide or misdirect parents and the public in general about what is happening in the middle school.

Chapter nine discusses the ethical considerations of the middle school movement. The author quotes a number of people who study ethics, who say that people should have voluntary informed consent. The radical activists are using children to achieve the ends the radical activists want. I felt the author was too gentle here. If I go to a dentist for a filling and he gives me a root cannel, he has been unethical, and I'll sue. If I go to a lawyer for a will, and he takes my money without producing what I want, he clearly is being unethical. But when parents and the public, who pay taxes, voice their desires about what they want in an education, many in the middle school movement will ignore the direction of the public and go off and do what the middle school radicals want.

The last chapter addresses what does all of this mean for the twenty first century. If middle schools keep dumbing down our children, then we as a nation will not be able to compete.

I greatly enjoyed this book. It is well thought out, addresses a serious problem in our society, and is well documented. If you have young gifted and talented children, and if you want them to get a strong academic education, then this would be a very good book to read.

Those critics of Yecke's book who claim that she makes "bizarre" and "unsubstantiated claims" cause me to wonder if they have even bothered to read the text at all. Not only is this one of the most meticulously researched, annotated, and footnoted books I have ever encountered in my nineteen years in the field of education, but it is also one of the most timely in that it deals with pertinent issues, the results of which we can witness in our own society and the fruits of which we will be forced to reckon with as graduates of our dumbed-down educational system begin to take over jobs and leadership positions in our society.

To examine Yecke's credentials is to find a woman infinitely qualified to comment on the current state of our middle schools - she is an honored middle school teacher, she is a respected academic in the field of educational policy, she is a no-nonsense author and administrator of such policy, and (perhaps most importantly) she is a concerned mother of two. But despite all of these elements, she is one of the most amicable, welcoming, and forthright professionals I have ever had the pleasure of meeting. Everything about this woman exudes dedication to a cause greater than her own interests and absolute integrity in execution. Some claim that she is driven by an extreme right-wing agenda because she has served under Republican governors. I must admit that this was my initial prejudice as well. However, immediately upon beginning this book, I found myself faced with issues that know no political classification but are instead universal ones that should be of concern to all Americans. I have discussed this book with colleagues of several political persuasions and the verdict has always been the same: Yecke is correct.

As an educator and an academic, I have nothing but praise for this book, which focuses not only on the problem, but also on the solution. To those who are so quick to condemn The War Against Excellence, I would ask them to read it again -or perhaps for the first time - with an open mind and no political agenda. I have no doubt that they will uncover not only an undeniable pattern of erosion in our public schools, but also the practical and proactive steps for salvaging our educational system and creating a nation of young adults who will have earned a true sense of self-worth through legitimate means of accomplishment, and not some sorry substitute for it masquerading as "self-esteem" but rather consisting of the quiet complacency of apathy.

Cheri Yecke's explanation of the rise of mediocrity in American education is intelligent, informed, and important. The mess of American education is a kind of Gorgian knot; even well-meaning reformers often don't know where to concentrate their efforts. Yecke's explanation of the philosophical weakness of middle school identifies one of the most important strands in that intimidating knot. She will undoubtedly be criticized for her efforts: the resistance to meaningful school reform is seldom fought over "what's best for the kids"--it is most frequently a fierce battle to preserve power, turf and careers. She has made a strategic and corageous foray into occupied land on behalf of the captives: our students.

The pursuit of excellence has been an integral part of the Western tradition, contributing much to its unique vitality. To my knowledge no one has doubted the propriety of pursuing excellence; after all who would want to recommend mediocrity? No one, that is, until quite recently. Welcome to the bizarre world of the middle school as revealed to us by Cheri Pierson Yecke in TheWar Against Excellence, The Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America?s Middle Schools. It?s the world of "brain periodization," "brain-based curricula," "identity development," "detracking," "untracking," and "transescents." It?s a world where "progressive" educators know better than parents what?s best for their children (Parents aren?t up to date on the latest findings in Ed. Psych.) and high ability students are urged to "succumb to peer pressure and strive not to achieve, or they will risk making their classmates look bad---and their actions might even go so far as to force the non-motivated students to work harder!"
Dr. Yecke?s book, the fruit of seven years of research and writing, is not only a work of impeccable scholarship, it is an expose, guaranteed to make the blood boil of everyone who is interested in genuine education and the future of our country. It is carefully organized, well written, and exceedingly well researched and documented. As Dr. Yecke says, it is a story that had to be told, and a story the basically tells itself through quotations from books, articles and papers delivered at conferences.
The saga begins as Yecke, the mother of two academically talented daughters
and a middle school teacher herself, became disillusioned (an understatement) with "self-proclaimed experts" and their "pseudo-wisdom" who turned the middle school into an "activist movement designed to force radical social changes, regardless of the values or desires of parents, students, or members of the community at large." Yecke returned to graduate school, and earned her doctorate so she could deal with the "so-called experts" as an equal. And that is what she does in this tough, hard-hitting, and much needed book.
The middle school made its debut in the late ?50s and early ?60s. The National Middle School Association (NMSA) was founded in 1973. To most citizens the appearance of middle schools meant simply a new way of organizing the classes, but for their champions it was much more---it was a movement. They saw, rightly of course, that a new structure is easier to change than an existing one. Hence they planned to use, and have been using, the middle school as a "testing ground" to change, first the whole educational system, and then society itself. As one prominent activist, Paul George, put it, the middle school has become "the focus of societal experimentation, the vehicle for movement towards increased justice and equality in the society as a whole." This involved de-emphasizing academic achievement and focusing on alleged personal and social needs of students. As two "authorities" (Johnson and Markle) argue, "By systematically applying attitude change techniques, the chances of developing desirable attitudes among middle school students can be improved." Professor George?s goals are even clearer: schools "are not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They?re about redistributing the wealth of the future."
To justify the dumbing-down of the curriculum, the social engineers, starting in 1978, made use of a loony, mad scientist theory called "brain periodization." This first cousin of phrenology claims that "brain growth reaches a plateau around the ages of 12-14 at which time ?the brain virtually ceases to grow.?" Hence during this "learning plateau period" it was considered dangerous to introduce "new and challenging material" which could result in "negative neural networks to dissipate the energy of the [challenging] inputs." The NMSA "formally endorsed" this theory in 1981, and the theory reigned supreme for ten years. Even after it was admitted in 1993 that "there is no supporting evidence" for it, its influence lingered on and lingers on even today, sustained by ideology but not by science. Parents who complain of lack of rigor, low expectations, and student boredom are considered "difficult," and papers are delivered at conferences advising teachers how to deal with them.
Meanwhile, the most able students, left high and dry and bored by the abolition of "ethically unacceptable" gifted and talented programs are kept busy with "cooperative learning" and peer tutoring. The utopians did away with spelling bees and honor rolls hoping to breed "competition out of the next generation."
Yecke reveals many more things that are profoundly disturbing. Let me list a few: The attempt to achieve social justice by "making everyone equal" (this means equal outcomes, not just equality of opportunity). The blanket condemnation of competition some forms of which have great social and personal value. The disparagement of academic achievement. The use of cooperative learning to promote group identity at the expense of individual identity. The romantic notions of human nature and the naïve utopianism. And finally, the use of our children to advance a revolutionary social agenda. It is sad to learn that the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Foundations have played major roles in all of this nonsense.
It should be emphasized that Yecke?s book is a critique of what the educational theorists and activists, mostly professors of education, are proposing, rather than a report on what is actually going on in middle school classrooms. Fortunately, most teachers, relying on common sense, intuition, and experience, know enough to ignore the theories they were required to study while earning their certification. As E.D. Hirsch has said (and I?m sure Dr. Yecke would agree), ideas are the enemy, not people. It is the half-baked theories of professors under pressure to publish that must be exposed, discredited, and rejected.
Finally, I?m sorry that the exorbitant price of this book ($50.00) will prevent many from reading it. It is a book everyone should read.

As a former student who was always classified as "gifted" and who has personally experienced the frustrations of mixed-ability grouping and cooperative learning, I found this book to be outstanding. Yecke's extensive documentation clearly shows how the "middle school movement", particularly in the 80's and 90's, degenerated into a way to foster social change at the expense of academic achievement. Social egalitarianism should not be achieved at the expense of "dumbing down" classroom material but rather by teaching each student to go as far as he or she can. This book is a must-read for any parent, teacher, or administrator who is wondering how American education has reached its current dismal state and wants to work to change it.

Cheri Yecke's War Against Gifted Children illustrates a vital but poorly understood aspect of education policy making: Educational improvement campaigns are often infused with social engineering motives. Dr. Yecke does an extraordinary job of documenting how the American Middle School Movement has become just such a campaign.

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 seeks 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. In the case of the American Middle School Movement, however, they can read the War Against Gifted Children and judge for themselves.

The pursuit of excellence has been an integral part of the Western tradition, contributing much to its unique vitality. To my knowledge no one has doubted the propriety of pursuing excellence; after all who would want to recommend mediocrity? No one, that is, until quite recently. Welcome to the bizarre world of the middle school as revealed to us by Cheri Pierson Yecke in TheWar Against Excellence, The Rising Tide of Mediocrity in America?s Middle Schools. It?s the world of "brain periodization," "brain-based curricula," "identity development," "detracking," "untracking," and "transescents." It?s a world where "progressive" educators know better than parents what?s best for their children (Parents aren?t up to date on the latest findings in Ed. Psych.) and high ability students are urged to "succumb to peer pressure and strive not to achieve, or they will risk making their classmates look bad---and their actions might even go so far as to force the non-motivated students to work harder!"
Dr. Yecke?s book, the fruit of seven years of research and writing, is not only a work of impeccable scholarship, it is an expose, guaranteed to make the blood boil of everyone who is interested in genuine education and the future of our country. It is carefully organized, well written, and exceedingly well researched and documented. As Dr. Yecke says, it is a story that had to be told, and a story the basically tells itself through quotations from books, articles and papers delivered at conferences.
The saga begins as Yecke, the mother of two academically talented daughters
and a middle school teacher herself, became disillusioned (an understatement) with "self-proclaimed experts" and their "pseudo-wisdom" who turned the middle school into an "activist movement designed to force radical social changes, regardless of the values or desires of parents, students, or members of the community at large." Yecke returned to graduate school, and earned her doctorate so she could deal with the "so-called experts" as an equal. And that is what she does in this tough, hard-hitting, and much needed book.
The middle school made its debut in the late ?50s and early ?60s. The National Middle School Association (NMSA) was founded in 1973. To most citizens the appearance of middle schools meant simply a new way of organizing the classes, but for their champions it was much more---it was a movement. They saw, rightly of course, that a new structure is easier to change than an existing one. Hence they planned to use, and have been using, the middle school as a "testing ground" to change, first the whole educational system, and then society itself. As one prominent activist, Paul George, put it, the middle school has become "the focus of societal experimentation, the vehicle for movement towards increased justice and equality in the society as a whole." This involved de-emphasizing academic achievement and focusing on alleged personal and social needs of students. As two "authorities" (Johnson and Markle) argue, "By systematically applying attitude change techniques, the chances of developing desirable attitudes among middle school students can be improved." Professor George?s goals are even clearer: schools "are not about taking each child as far as he or she can go. They?re about redistributing the wealth of the future."
To justify the dumbing-down of the curriculum, the social engineers, starting in 1978, made use of a loony, mad scientist theory called "brain periodization." This first cousin of phrenology claims that "brain growth reaches a plateau around the ages of 12-14 at which time ?the brain virtually ceases to grow.?" Hence during this "learning plateau period" it was considered dangerous to introduce "new and challenging material" which could result in "negative neural networks to dissipate the energy of the [challenging] inputs." The NMSA "formally endorsed" this theory in 1981, and the theory reigned supreme for ten years. Even after it was admitted in 1993 that "there is no supporting evidence" for it, its influence lingered on and lingers on even today, sustained by ideology but not by science. Parents who complain of lack of rigor, low expectations, and student boredom are considered "difficult," and papers are delivered at conferences advising teachers how to deal with them.
Meanwhile, the most able students, left high and dry and bored by the abolition of "ethically unacceptable" gifted and talented programs are kept busy with "cooperative learning" and peer tutoring. The utopians did away with spelling bees and honor rolls hoping to breed "competition out of the next generation."
Yecke reveals many more things that are profoundly disturbing. Let me list a few: The attempt to achieve social justice by "making everyone equal" (this means equal outcomes, not just equality of opportunity). The blanket condemnation of competition some forms of which have great social and personal value. The disparagement of academic achievement. The use of cooperative learning to promote group identity at the expense of individual identity. The romantic notions of human nature and the naïve utopianism. And finally, the use of our children to advance a revolutionary social agenda. It is sad to learn that the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Foundations have played major roles in all of this nonsense.
It should be emphasized that Yecke?s book is a critique of what the educational theorists and activists, mostly professors of education, are proposing, rather than a report on what is actually going on in middle school classrooms. Fortunately, most teachers, relying on common sense, intuition, and experience, know enough to ignore the theories they were required to study while earning their certification. As E.D. Hirsch has said (and I?m sure Dr. Yecke would agree), ideas are the enemy, not people. It is the half-baked theories of professors under pressure to publish that must be exposed, discredited, and rejected.
Finally, I?m sorry that the exorbitant price of this book ($50.00) will prevent many from reading it. It is a book everyone should read.

Dr. Cheri Pierson Yecke points out the statements in various official forums and publications that led to "the middle school movement," which places emphasis on "social engineering" goals at the expense of academic excellence. Dr. Yecke provides a powerful resource for people who want to challenge administrators who are against ability grouping and in favor of group projects. Unfortunately, she does not provide many suggestions of what to do after reading her book, but she does provide the ammunition for change for those who wish to run with it.

The evidence Dr. Yecke provides regarding middle schools is concerning. In extensively endnoted text she traces the development of the middle school from the initial split of grades 7 and 8 from the elementary schools to a "junior high" in the early 1900s, through the gain in popularity for the junior high in the baby boom of the 1950s and 60s, to their evolution to "middle schools" in the 1970s and 1980s. Her main emphasis, however, is the rather abrupt change from a focus on academic achievement to a focus on social change from within the middle school--"social engineering."

Dr. Yecke pinpoints the first mention of the perceived need to "level the playing field" in terms of academic achievement not by focusing on bringing academic opportunities to at risk populations but rather by telling top performers it was their social duty to help others who could not or would not perform at the same level. She points out that there is some evidence of a reversal in the trend of acceptance of brain periodicity in the early 2000s, but that the changes are coming about slowly and could not been seen universally at this time.

The writing style is academic with extensive quotations and endnotes, but still very readable because of word choice and information flow. One concern I had was Dr. Yenke's choice to reuse certain narrow quotations to support different arguments. For example, Ms Yecke presents the exact same quote of an eleventh-grade girl from New York on page 125 to support her argument against cooperative learning and on page 146 to support her argument against peer tutoring and on page 172 in her "Analysis of Beliefs and Driving Convictions" chapter. Some other quotations are similarly reused in the book. Surely another quotation would have made her later arguments more effective.

My biggest disappointment in this book is that it is a call to action but provides few suggestions for avenues that action might take. Ms. Yecke points out serious problems in the leadership and management of the middle schools in America today. She offers homeschool and private school as alternatives to concerned parents, and points out that few private school separate middle school grades from their elementary school programs. She also states there may be a trend back toward an academic focus on the part of public middle school principals. Beyond that , however, she does not offer suggestions for ways to change public middle schools. Perhaps D.r Yecke believes that no changes are possible at this time, but I would prefer a book that not only described a need for change, but also suggested a way to change.

Despite these limitations, I found this book to be very interesting reading and valuable for understanding the current state of middle school education. I recommend this book to those seeking a thorough review of the development of middle school education theory. It is a strong and critical viewpoint of the state of middle school education in America today and should provide good talking points in any school board or similar discussion of middle school opportunities.