This digest describes the development of the standard middle school and its impact on rural areas, discusses the original goals of middle schooling, and suggests how rural schools can meet these goals despite their small size. The earliest middle schools were innovative rural junior high schools that enriched their programs with additional…

The curriculum now being taught in many kindergartens is profoundly different from what it was two decades ago. The kindergarten classroom, once conceived of as a play- and group adjustment-oriented setting, may now also be a classroom with an "academic" approach, characterized by direct teaching of discrete skills with specific…