Article: Left out in middle years Too many students, too little time for undertrained junior high teachers

Susan Gerstein lost her illusions about middle school the day she stopped by to tell her daughter's favorite teacher how much the 11-year-old enjoyed her class.

But the teacher, a sixth-grade science instructor at Brown Middle School, in Newton, didn't know who Gerstein's daughter was.

"She was embarrassed," recalls the Newton mother of four. "She said, `I'm sorry, but I've got 75 kids, and you just can't know them all.' "

The problem wasn't just too many kids per teacher. Gerstein's daughter -- like most students in middle school or junior high school -- was changing classes five times a day, seeing more teachers for much briefer periods than she had in elementary school.

While this ...

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