K-3? K-8? 5-8? 7-8? How about a ninth-grade-only learning center? What is the best grade configuration for a school? A report from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory looks at schools of every configuration!
What is the ideal grade configuration? Is the ideal a K-5 elementary school followed by a 6-8 middle school and a four-year high school? Or is a K-8 elementary school a better solution? Which grades should a middle school include? 5-8? 6-8? 7-8? 7-9?
Grade configuration, and its wide range of options, is the subject of a "hot topic" report from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL). The report, Grade Span Configuration: Who Goes Where?, takes a case study approach to the issue. It looks at eight different schools with seven different grade configurations. It focuses on the communities' reasons for establishing those spans, and some of the benefits and drawbacks of each approach.
Drawing on available research, the report concludes that the effectiveness of grade groupings varies from community to community, school to school. Rural districts, for example, may prefer to keep middle graders in the elementary school to bolster community identity while an urban school may want to minimize the influence of older students by middle school groupings of six through eight, or seven through nine, or some other combination. The report cites one finding that seventh- or eighth-graders in the United States attend schools with about 30 different grade spans!
This report is intended as food-for-thought. It's intended to be one resource for administrators, school boards, concerned parents, and others interested in the subject of grade configuration. The report includes an extensive list of resources for anyone interested in an in-depth exploration of the issue.
GRADE-CONFIGURATION CONSIDERATIONS
Many factors must be taken into consideration when deciding which grade configuration best suits the needs of any community. Among the considerations are:
NWREL's report includes a laundry list of questions tied to those considerations. Anyone involved in establishing a grade-span configuration for a new school or reorganizing the configuration of an existing school should take a look at that list of questions and at an accompanying list of "tips for implementation."
THE CASE STUDIES
The schools included in the sampler are:
Grade
Configuration: Who Goes Where? Article by Gary Hopkins
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School Name
Location
Grade
ConfigurationGirdwood Elementary School
Girdwood, Alaska
K-8
Elk City School
Elk City, Idaho
K-10
Monforton School
Bozeman, Montana
K-8
Damascus Middle School
Boring, Oregon
5-8
Hollyrod Elementary School
Portland, Oregon
K-3
Oregon City High School
Oregon City, Oregon
9 only
Eckstein Middle School
Seattle, Washington
6-8
Komachin Middle School
Lacey, Washington
7-8
What is the best configuration of grades for K-12 schooling? Is it an
elementary school, followed by a middle school, followed by a four-year
high school? Or are there advantages to a K-8 school, followed by a four-year
high school? Which middle-school configuration better promotes social
adjustment?...
Education World® Editor-in-Chief
Copyright © 2006 Education World
Links last updated 09/24/2005
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