chat

Okay so I've read a few recent articles on it and it seems the research is less clear-cut than I thought based on what I learned ten or twenty years ago.

The idea is that shaking up a kid's peer group when they're already navigating the transition to being a teenager puts a lot of unnecessary stress of them, whereas structuring school as k-8 allows them to remain in a stable community during their early teenage years and gives them opportunities to be at the head of their peer group and be given leadership opportunities.

But the counter is that teens have specific educational and community needs that a k-8 elementary school doesn't necessarily provide. The whole reason middle schools arose in the first place is to better cater to young teens.

It's also possible that the previous studies showing middle schoolers underperforming compared to their k-8 counterparts was actually just capturing socioeconomic differences, as places with k-8 tended to be legacy schools in wealthier areas while poorer areas tended to have middle schools.

The conclusion that most of the articles I read from academic institutions came to was that, if it matters, it matters a lot less than basically every other problem that schools in America face.