February 11, 2005 | By ELISSA GOOTMAN | New York Times

New York State, desperate to improve the quality of its middle schools, is giving educators more freedom to experiment, relaxing some of the strict requirements that for two decades have dictated how many minutes students spend on specific subjects.

The new policy, which the Board of Regents announced yesterday, will give educators in failing schools the ability to spend less time on nonacademic subjects like arts and home and career skills and more time on math and reading, if they see fit.

The board will also allow a limited number of new and successful middle schools to abandon the state's scheduling requirements entirely, freeing them up to redraw curriculums without worrying about how many hours of science or math, let alone technology education, that each eighth grader gets.

The policy was approved after a nearly three-year process in which the state's Education Department scoured the country to figure out what makes middle schools work, but failed to find one successful model to bring back to New York. In essence, the latest attempt to address the question of what goes wrong in middle schools, long considered the black hole of public education, is to give schools license to try new approaches.

"Middle schools have been the bane of every educator's existence - no one knew what to do with middle schools," said Merryl H. Tisch, a regent from New York City. "We felt at the board that we had to do something to give people enough room to really recreate a whole division of school."

Dr. Tisch added: "The regulations governing the schools were so stringent that they just couldn't fit it all in. This says we're not going to tell you how to do it. We're going to give you enough room to do it your way, as long as you get the job done."

Across the country, educators have grappled with the problems of the middle school years, when many students lose their way academically. In New York State, while fourth-grade standardized test scores have improved markedly over the years, eighth-grade scores have remained lackluster.

Of the state's 1,145 middle schools, 346 are considered failing under the federal No Child Left Behind law. In New York City, the picture is worse, with 194 out of 340 middle schools considered failing.

Not all middle schools will take advantage of the new policy. To do so, schools must apply to the state, showing how educators will continue to teach students the required skills and material. Only 30 new and successful schools will be allowed to do away with the state's time requirements for academic subjects. Many will likely be new schools created in New York City under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's school reform plan.

Michele Cahill, senior counselor for education policy for Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein, said the new policy would allow schools to integrate activities like library skills and music education into other classes.

"We need to make middle school less fragmented for kids," she said.

Some educators fought the policy, fearing it would invite schools to slash all but the basics.

Shirley Ware, president of the New York State Association of Family and Consumer Science Educators, said she was concerned that schools would abuse the new policy to eliminate or reduce some programs.

"We do a lot of math, science, English and social studies in our classes," Mrs. Ware said. "If it's not broke, don't fix it."

Some members of the Board of Regents said that while this was a concern, the risk was worth it.

"The danger is that people will deprive kids of curriculum they really need in art, gym, foreign languages, et cetera, in order to cram down things like more mathematics, more English," said Harry Phillips III, a regent from Hartsdale, N.Y. "I thought the flexibility in curriculum would enable us to do longitudinal studies and show what works and what doesn't work."

But Randi Weingarten, the president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City, said she believed that many failing schools were already skirting certain state requirements, in an effort to bolster test scores.

"This plan is essentially just codifying what people have done," she said. "It's a really, really tough age for kids and thus far nobody has figured out what to do about that."