Today's Times is reporting on the newest wrinkle in radical school reform since Bard president Leon Botstein proposed doing away with high school altogether — doing away instead with its younger sibling, middle school. Performance is historically so abysmal in those three-year programs that the question among administrators and researchers is no longer whether it's a good idea but rather whether K–8 or 6–12 is the better solution. But how do the children feel about it? For that we direct you to reporter Elissa Gootman's accompanying photo essay on P.S. 105 in Far Rockaway (K–8) and Harlem's Frederick Douglass High School (6–12). The mortified faces on the middle-school-aged students suggest an even more radical reform idea that would no doubt make the teens happy. Never mind middle school: Can they just do away with adolescence?

Photo Essay: The Middle School Dilemma [NYT]
Taking Middle Schoolers Out of the Middle [NYT]