MOSES LAKE - Frank Atkinson is the new principal at Frontier Middle School.

Atkinson is a veteran of more than 20 years in education, and "this is - I have to count it up - my 16th year as a principal," he said.

But Atkinson said he didn't intend to be a teacher when he got out of college. He was a music major, graduating from college but skeptical of a musical career. There were a lot of starving musicians out there, trying to make a living, "and I didn't want to be a starving musician," he said. He enrolled in teacher training, and discovered something. "I absolutely loved teaching kids and teaching music," he said.

That led to a career teaching kids from kindergarten through high school, he said. But he liked the middle school kids best.

Most of his career was spent in Oak Harbor and Mukilteo, he said, and after five years in educational publishing he returned to administration last year on a one-year contract in Tacoma.

"I was hoping to find a good match in a principalship," Atkinson said, and that led him to Moses Lake. A native of Spokane, "I'm an eastern Washington kind of guy," he said.

"The community really demonstrated that they care for their children. And I think that's critical," Atkinson said. Parents and students are important parts of the effort to improve education; in fact, Atkinson said middle school students are important voices when it comes to making their schools better. "Their ideas can be really helpful," he said.

Middle school kids are his favorite to teach, he said. "It's challenging and it's a lot of fun."

American schools are trying to do something that's never been done before, which is educate every child in a diverse society and help them reach their maximum potential, he said.

"I'm optimistic we're getting better," he said. Teachers have access to better information about their students and they're getting it more quickly, he said, which allows teachers to plan ways to improve their own techniques and student learning. National standards and new administrative assessments also are promising developments, he said.

Teachers, administrators, students and parents make more progress when they collaborate in the search for improvement, he said.