The recommendations of the Carnegie Council on adolescent development: Attitudes of middle level administrators and degree of implementation in Arizona middle level schools.

Abstract

The Carnegie Task Force on Education of Young Adolescents, following two years of in-depth research involving America's middle level education, published in June of 1989 a report, Turning Points: Preparing American Youth for the 21st Century. The report contained eight recommendations for changes in education of early adolescents, identified as those children between the ages of eleven and fifteen years. Since the publication of "Turning Points", no assessment of its impact on the educational system has been completed. On the premise that the success or failure of implementing such sweeping reform hinges on the degree of acceptance of the recommendations by the middle level administrators, this study has been devised to determine the degree of acceptance of the concepts supporting each of the eight recommendations by the middle level principals in Arizona. The study also examined the level of implementation of these notions in Arizona's middle level schools. The data collected from a survey of middle level principals in Arizona revealed the respondents almost universally agreed with the concepts of the recommendations of the Carnegie report, while showing a less than adequate level of implementation of those concepts. The data uncovered no significant relationship between either the degree of acceptance, or implementation of the recommendations of the Carnegie report by middle level school principals in Arizona, and grade level configuration, school size or community size.