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Middle schoolers do better in K-8 setting

Ohanian Comment: I've taught in both K-8 schools and in middle schools, and I have mixed feelings. I embraced the middle school concept--until I discovered what it meant to have a school library filled with books my remedial readers wouldn't touch, never mind read. It was lovely when I taught in the K-8 building to be able to team individual 7th and 8th graders to mentor students in K-4.


Suspensions are down. Test scores and attendance are up. And many people are happier.

So concludes a first-of-its-kind report in Milwaukee on how sixth- through eighth graders are faring in the school district's rapidly growing number of kindergarten through eighth-grade (or K-8) schools.

In a relatively short period of time, K-8s have expanded to dominate the school landscape in Milwaukee and other cities such as Cleveland, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Philadelphia, so the report will be heavily scrutinized here and elsewhere.

In 2000, there were only about 10 K-8 schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools district; this fall there will be 61 K-8 schools, including those that are transitioning to become K-8s. Meanwhile enrollment in traditional middle schools is expected to plummet by 16% in one year alone, from about 13,200 students last fall to about 11,050 this fall.

The movement toward K-8s has been based largely on parent demand and a growing affinity for the structure - and not on much evidence that students perform or develop better at the schools in Milwaukee.

"I wanted to investigate whether or not this big policy decision we had made in response to parents was resulting in improved outcomes for kids," said Deb Lindsey, MPS' director of research and assessment, who commissioned the report.

The report compares the behavior and academic performance of middle school-age students in K-8s vs. traditional middle schools, which typically serve grades six through eight.

When a set of MPS middle schools was compared with a set of schools described as "long-term K-8s," the study found:

• Average annual attendance was nearly 4 percentage points higher for eighth-graders in the K-8s than in the middle schools.

• The average chronic suspension rate was nearly 9 percentage points higher for seventh-graders in the middle schools than in the K-8s.

• In the eighth grade, K-8 students perform almost 9 scale score points better than middle school students on a standardized reading exam, where the range is typically between 600 and 700.

These results held up even when the author of the study factored in such student characteristics as poverty, English-language abilities and prior academic achievement.

The report comes at a time of intense discussions over the future of the traditional middle school and will likely help fuel some of that debate.

"I just believe we need a balance, and should not eliminate the middle school education experience in what I call a trend," said Tyrone Dumas, project manager in MPS' Office of Diversity and Community Engagement. He pointed out that students in middle schools are more likely to experience a range of different subject-area specialist teachers over the course of the day. "I think some kids need a transition when they are in sixth grade, and a place where they can change teachers and classrooms throughout the day."

In response to the rapid rise of K-8s across the country, Deborah Kasak, the executive director of the National Forum to Accelerate Middle-Grades Reform, said the focus needs to be on strengthening the offerings for 11- to 14-year-olds, whether they are in middle schools or K-8s.

"How much common planning time is there? How engaging is the curriculum? What do they do to make connections across the curriculum? Sadly, there are too many schools that don't do things as well as they need to, and sadly that reflects poorly on the middle schools."
The best of both worlds

District officials say they don't intend to use the report's findings to seal the fate of the middle school in Milwaukee. Instead, they hope to home in on what aspects of the K-8s and middle schools are working -and which are not - for students, and retain the best aspects of both types of programs.

"The report tells us that outcomes are better for kids in K-8s, but it doesn't tell us why," Lindsey said. "It doesn't tell us that the reason kids do better is because they are in a K-8, and we need to look at the practices in K-8s and middle schools to see what we can learn."

The report, written by education researcher Gary Cook, points out that teacher qualifications and school leadership might explain some of the differences in outcomes, and not just the school structure.

Whatever the reason, the differences are dramatic.

Even though Cook did not speculate on the reasons for these differences in performance, families and teachers at K-8 schools have their own ideas.

"It's a much better environment for learning," said Jean Flynn, who has two children who graduated from A.E. Burdick K-8 School, one who is starting seventh grade there in the fall, and two others who went to traditional middle schools.

Flynn and other parents and school officials consistently describe the K-8s as fostering a more family-like atmosphere where the teachers have more time to get to know the students and parents than in middle schools.

Flynn said she thinks students attending traditional middle schools encounter more teenage pressures than those at K-8s.

"There's more of a problem with children fighting to be at the top of the mountain," she said. "There was a lot of fighting, more boy-girl relationships. Children seem to feel older than what they are, and you don't have the relationship with the staff built up to help you out."

Rob Schleck, Burdick's principal, said he wasn't surprised by the results of the report.

"It's just more of a family and community atmosphere, having the young children with the older kids," he said. "It feels like a natural thing."
A smaller range of programs

But Schleck and others concede that K-8s can sometimes struggle to offer the range of programs and extracurricular activities that some middle schools have.

"I don't think many of the K-8 schools have the facility to even offer wood shop, metal shop, drafting class, and other kinds of learning opportunities," Dumas said. "They barely have science rooms. You have all these buildings built as middle schools with all of these spaces which are empty now."

Robin Kitzrow, the principal of Fritsche Middle School, called it a "difficult time" for those dedicated to the concept of middle school education.

"I like that feeling of someplace bigger as you get them ready for high school," she said. "In my mind it is like a rite of passage . . . learning how to be independent, make some choices and find their interests."

Kitzrow said that the Fritsche teachers are not only specialists in that age level, but subject-area specialists as well.

"My math teachers only teach math," she said. "The academic rigor is very focused."

The shift to K-8s was sparked largely by the Neighborhood Schools Initiative, an MPS plan passed in 2000 with the goal of cutting transportation costs by getting more families to send their kids to neighborhood schools. That plan called for the creation of 29 K-8 schools.

But since that time, the trend toward K-8s has taken on a life of its own. The School Board has approved more than 20 K-8 schools separate from the Neighborhood Schools Initiative. Before 2000, the school district had 23 traditional middle schools; in the coming school year, it expects to have about 15 of them. Sholes, Steuben, Jackie Robinson and Edison are among the middle schools that have either closed or changed their structure.

"It's like only the strong will survive," Kitzrow said. "If you don't attract kids, you won't be there."

— Sarah Carr
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
2005-07-29
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jul05/344831.asp

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