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The Middle-School Cliff
In Ontario, it has become quite common for school boards to segregate their grade 7 and 8 students in a separate school called a middle school. But when a Harvard professor decided to investigate the effectiveness of middle schools, his findings cast serious doubt on the wisdom of this practice.
Basically, the researchers found that "moving to a middle school causes a substantial drop in student test scores (relative to that of students in who remain in K-8 schools) the first year in which the transition takes place." As well, they found that "the relative achievement of middle-school students continues to decline in the subsequent years they spend in such schools", nor was there any evidence that these losses were ever recouped in high school. In fact, there was evidence that a higher percentage of middle-school students went on to drop out of school.
The researchers suggest two main (possibly inter-related) explanations: a) school transitions lower student achievement; and b) the overall climate for student learning is worse in middle schools. Here is a more nuanced discussion of the study's findings.
We find little evidence that the negative effects of attending a middle school are attributable to differences in resources, cohort sizes, or educational practices. We do, however, find suggestive evidence that the overall climate for student learning is worse in middle schools than in schools that serve students from elementary school through the 8th grade. This suggests a final potential interpretation of our results that is directly related to the choice of grade configuration: students may benefit from being among the oldest students in a school setting that includes very young students, perhaps because they have greater opportunity to take on leadership roles. This interpretation could account for both the gains in relative achievement made by students in K-5 and K-6 schools prior to entering middle schools and the superior performance of K-8 students relative to their peers in middle schools....
Taken as a whole, our results suggest that school transitions lower student achievement but that attending middle schools in particular has adverse consequences for American students. Especially when considered along with those of other recent studies, our findings clearly support ongoing efforts in urban school districts to convert stand-alone elementary and middle schools into schools with K-8 configurations.
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