Just exactly where students in the middle grades belong has been debated for decades. Before the 1950s, they were housed in K-8 schools. Then junior highs were created to accommodate the needs of seventh- and eighth-graders. Next came middle schools that put sixth, seventh and eighth grades together. Now, with the return to K-8 schools, things have come full circle.
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Yet, there's still no consensus as to where middle-grade children fare best. With their lives on an emotional roller coaster — one moment appearing all grown up and then in an instant reverting to childish behavior — is there any wonder there's confusion about where they will thrive?
School districts in San Diego, Bassett, San Juan, Hacienda-La Puente, Long Beach and Santee have closed middle schools, converted them to K-8 or are considering such a move. California presently has 577 K-8 schools, which is slightly fewer than three years ago, according to Dr. Jim Miller with the California Department of Education's Middle and High School Improvement Office. But statistics don't tell the whole story. While urban areas have switched to K-8 for academic and behavioral reasons, some rural K-8 districts have converted to middle schools to keep up with booming populations.
While the number of K-8 schools nationwide is estimated to be relatively small — approximately 5,000, according to the U.S. Department of Education - it has grown 17 percent since 1994. Cincinnati, Baltimore and Philadelphia have recently converted large urban middle schools to K-8 campuses. Cleveland has converted 23 middle schools to K-8 status, and New York City plans to overhaul as many as two-thirds of its 218 middle schools, eliminating many of them. Colorado is also experiencing a strong push to create more K-8 schools.
The reasons to convert to K-8 range from reducing school size to dealing with high absenteeism, discipline problems and dropout rates. Some districts, such as Stockton, believe reconfiguration will reform learning and raise test scores. Other districts, such as Paramount, hope that closing middle schools and keeping older children at elementary schools will prevent gang activity and delay the onset of the "teenage attitude."
Paramount Unified's two middle schools were closed seven years ago, and the district went K-8 except for the high school and a separate ninth-grade campus. "Rather than fix the problems that came from only having one counselor at each school site and working on student behavior, they just broke the schools up," recalls Teachers Association of Paramount President Chris Carey. "The feeling was that by keeping the students in elementary school, we could nurture them longer."
The reconfiguration did curtail a great many of the behavior problems, says Carey. "The fallout was the loss of programs."
The elementary schools now lack science, the arts and electives. "All the choices are gone. You have a large group of kids with a vast ability grouping — RSP [Resource Specialist Program] and GATE [Gifted and Talented Education] all mainstreamed together — and some are getting bored to tears. The kids may be contained, as I see it, but they are also disengaged."
Michele Lewis, who teaches life skills for middle-graders at Mark Keppel Elementary School in Paramount, has a different perspective. "We have much more control of preteens and teens going through issues. They are nicer longer. We have small numbers of tagging and gang issues. What you see in the hallways of a normal middle school — like hugging and kissing — you don't see here. I feel the benefits outweigh the negatives."
When Capistrano Unified explored converting several middle schools to K-8, there was community-wide controversy, says Capistrano Unified Education Association President Vicki Soderberg. Those who lived near schools slated for K-8 conversion complained that they didn't want more cars and traffic, but many suspect that the real reason was a fear of older students congregating in the area.
In a compromise move, only one school was reconfigured as K-8. Recently, city officials passed an ordinance that revokes the students' right to use a neighboring park during school hours.
"The way to resolve gang issues is with the community, not with changing the entire institution of middle school just because some kids may become involved in gangs," says CSU-San Bernardino Professor Irvin Howard, director of the California Schools to Watch Program for the CDE. "Kids who feel isolated and who are not being treated as young adults because they are kept in elementary school may look for an outlet. And gangs may be that outlet. Going K-8 is not necessarily the answer."
"Furthermore," says Howard, a member of the California Faculty Association, "very few elementary schools are equipped to handle the issues of students between the ages of 11 and 14. They tend to baby them and treat their issues as insignificant. But they are big issues, including identity, responsibility and self-esteem. Sexuality is also an issue."
Middle school helps students learn how to get along despite varying backgrounds and ethniticies. "If they stay in the same neighborhood elementary school, that doesn't happen, and they lose socialization opportunities."
Some education experts believe that poor and minority students who lack structure in their lives respond best to K-8 schools because they provide a "consistent" environment for several years. However, there are no sweeping studies that strongly link K-8 schools with improved student performance.
The Northwest Regional Laboratory's analysis concludes that the success of school configuration varies from community to community, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution.
The RAND Corp. study "The Wonder Years" challenges the rationale for having a separate middle school. It found that young teens suffer from abrupt transitions from elementary schools and that "the onset of puberty is an especially poor reason for beginning a new phase of schooling."
According to the Wall Street Journal, a comparison between middle school students and students who remained in K-8 schools in Milwaukee found that students who switched schools had a more negative attitude toward school in general.
Florida's Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability reviewed the literature in January 2005 and found that most research did not control for other factors that affect student success, such as the quality of teachers and school leadership, instructional practices, facility quality, school and grade size, and community and parental involvement. None of the studies comparing K-8 and middle schools assessed middle grades' performance over time to determine the impact of changing school configuration. "Without such analysis, it is difficult to determine whether the improved performance was due to the grade configuration or other factors such as changes in the population of students served."
In Baltimore, where K-8 reconfiguration is now under way, school officials claim that middle-grade students in K-8 schools score higher than their counterparts in regular middle schools on state tests. However, the Baltimore Sun's computer analysis of test scores and interviews with educators show that turning around middle school achievement is "far more complex than reconfiguring grades."
Clearly, sound research is overdue.
