It’s commonly understood among educators that mobility – students jumping from one school to another – is a leading indicator of low student achievement.
Yet the public school system in Colorado practically mandates it, bumping kids from their cozy neighborhood elementary schools into bigger middle schools before many are ready for such a drastic change.
Test scores drop and even self-esteem lags among those students who’d grown comfortable staying in one or two classrooms all day and now must navigate an hourly maze of classrooms, lockers and new teachers for each course.
It’s certainly not a problem unique to Colorado. School districts across the country have struggled with students who’ve just reached adolescence, a time when their bodies begin changing and questions about sex, alcohol and drugs become intertwined with thoughts of long division and geography. Nationally, test scores fall in reading and writing during those middle school years.
In the rush to reform education, it seems the reformers have jumped straight from elementary schools to high schools, leaving countless middle-schoolers behind. In Denver, though, the problem should not be ignored – after all, an increasing number of parents are opting out of the traditional middle schools, instead enrolling their children in kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools, or leaving DPS completely. For a cash-strapped district, every withdrawal hurts financially. Last year, the parents of almost 2,000 sixth-graders decided against sending their kids to traditional middle schools.
All told, if every district middle school were at capacity, DPS would be pulling in an extra $26 million a year – eliminating the system’s financial woes.
Dumping middle school and turning all elementary schools into K-8s won’t solve all the problems, but it’s clear DPS needs to offer parents more choices.
Even though the idea of K-8 schools is catching on across the country, it’s not a new one. In fact, K-8s were the norm for decades and are still common in rural areas. Most private schools are K-8, as well.
Denver introduced junior high schools in the early 20th century, converting them to middle schools with the addition of sixth grade as recently as 1988-89.
Other cities moving to K-8s have had mixed results. In Pittsburgh, the district closed seven middle schools last month and will expand 10 elementary schools this fall to take in those students, increasing the number of K-8 schools from 10 to 20. After a three-year pilot program, Cleveland’s K-8 schools had better test scores and fewer discipline problems than middle schools. But last year, the district expanded the program too quickly, adding three grade levels to about 20 schools, and suffered more discipline problems than usual. It was some proof, perhaps, that the building configuration is only part the equation.
Middle-schoolers, heading into those crucial teen years, need the stronger student-teacher bonds more commonly associated with K-8 schools, some research has shown.
Merely putting students into a K-8 setting isn’t the sole answer, and any move by DPS will need to be backed up with a strong emphasis on teaching, particularly teaching hard-to-reach adolescents, with strong support from administrators.
