I have often thought that the creation of middle school was one of the worst ideas in education. And I think the reason is very simple and it relates to emotional maturity (or the lack) at this stage of development.
When a child reaches 5th grade or 6th in a K5 or K6 school, they are the “top group “ but when they transition to middle school they become the lowest in the “pecking order” which is difficult to process emotionally. Then again after 8th grade and having been at the top, they transition again to 9th and the lowest order.
In a K-8 setting, they never have to experience this turbulent emotional transition but can instead just progress through the emotional changes at this age and focus more on learning. The transition to high school is much easier because they are a bit older and can usually handle it better.
"Nearly all of those who graduate a K-5 school will move on to a 6-8 middle school"
Curious if this is an assumption, or something that is borne out in enrollment data? It seems likely that parents (with the means to do so) view elementary school graduation as a natural transition point to revisit the public / private decision?
Here are the numbers for San Francisco in 2023-24. The first number is 5th grade enrollment and the second number is 6th grade enrollment.
SFUSD: 3,740 -> 3,297 (a drop of 443 or 12%)
SF charter schools: 279 -> 445 (a gain of 166)
Private schools: 1,670 -> 1,947 (a gain of 277)
(I'm amazed that these numbers balance because there's no reason for them to, given that people move all the time.)
I agree that the transition points (K,6,9) are when people with the means to afford private school might reconsider their choice but private schools are not an option for the majority of SFUSD parents so SFUSD still retains 88% of its 5th grade students (ignoring migration). Elsewhere in the state, private schools are much less prevalent. The number of students in 6th grade in public school statewide actually exceeded the number in 5th grade.
I think "nearly all" is a reasonable description when the worst county is at 88%.
I think this is particularly true in districts such as SF where middle school is where a lot of families leave public school and either leave the city or move to private school. Some return for high school but middle schools are seen as the ‘messy middle’ and I think there is a strong indicator that the cohorts are different.
Wondering, if changing schools is disruptive to learning, do we see that when K-8 students enter high school? Or are kids at that age better able to handle the transition?
It wouldn't surprise me if entering high school was also disruptive but I couldn't analyze that for two reasons. First, students in 9th and 10th grade don't take the SBAC so there's no data. Second, even if there were data, there are not enough public K-12 schools to do a comparison. If the data showed that students didn't learn much in 9th grade we wouldn't be able to tell whether that was because of changing school or because students just learn less from grade to grade (which appears to be true).
Makes sense. Thanks for the reply--and for your Substack, which is phenomenal. It's been an enormous help as we navigate SFUSD with a 14 and 17 year old and also just fun to see you dissect the data.
“Middle school” was awesome. But we had Junior High instead, 7-9. These age groups make more since I think. Too old for pooping pants elementary kids, too young to be hanging out with cig smoking seniors.
I can see the testing issues. Just cannot forget social and maturity factors here too. Age bands are good for development.
Do you think the number of new English language learners might be impacting the ELA scores of students in the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 public systems? If a number of children had English as a second language, this might explain the difference. Also, have you considered looking at graduation rates of K-5, 6-8, 9-12 systems vs. K-8, 9-12 systems? One of the primary purposes of middle school is to aid in the transition from elementary to the more complex environment of high school. It would be interesting to see if this were the case in the California context.
would love if you did your last analysis on various kinds of IEP catagories. I Suspect that kids qualifying under ASD or OHI and maybe even ED might do better in K8s. Kids with SLDs might do better in a K5/68 model.
It's impossible to do this analysis using public data, for two reasons. First, SBAC scores are only published for the umbrella category of "students with disabilities" and not for specific diagnoses. Second, SBAC scores are only published for subgroups with at least 10 students with scores (so if there are fewer than 10 Black 5th graders in a school, the school has no published score for Black 5th graders). To do what you want would require at least 10 students in 5th grade in an elementary school to have the disabilities you want to compare. There would be very few such schools and they would represent only a small fraction of the total population with those disabilities.
I have often thought that the creation of middle school was one of the worst ideas in education. And I think the reason is very simple and it relates to emotional maturity (or the lack) at this stage of development.
When a child reaches 5th grade or 6th in a K5 or K6 school, they are the “top group “ but when they transition to middle school they become the lowest in the “pecking order” which is difficult to process emotionally. Then again after 8th grade and having been at the top, they transition again to 9th and the lowest order.
In a K-8 setting, they never have to experience this turbulent emotional transition but can instead just progress through the emotional changes at this age and focus more on learning. The transition to high school is much easier because they are a bit older and can usually handle it better.
"Nearly all of those who graduate a K-5 school will move on to a 6-8 middle school"
Curious if this is an assumption, or something that is borne out in enrollment data? It seems likely that parents (with the means to do so) view elementary school graduation as a natural transition point to revisit the public / private decision?
Here are the numbers for San Francisco in 2023-24. The first number is 5th grade enrollment and the second number is 6th grade enrollment.
SFUSD: 3,740 -> 3,297 (a drop of 443 or 12%)
SF charter schools: 279 -> 445 (a gain of 166)
Private schools: 1,670 -> 1,947 (a gain of 277)
(I'm amazed that these numbers balance because there's no reason for them to, given that people move all the time.)
I agree that the transition points (K,6,9) are when people with the means to afford private school might reconsider their choice but private schools are not an option for the majority of SFUSD parents so SFUSD still retains 88% of its 5th grade students (ignoring migration). Elsewhere in the state, private schools are much less prevalent. The number of students in 6th grade in public school statewide actually exceeded the number in 5th grade.
I think "nearly all" is a reasonable description when the worst county is at 88%.
Thanks for the additional data, that's very interesting (and agree that it's surprising the numbers align)
I think this is particularly true in districts such as SF where middle school is where a lot of families leave public school and either leave the city or move to private school. Some return for high school but middle schools are seen as the ‘messy middle’ and I think there is a strong indicator that the cohorts are different.
Wondering, if changing schools is disruptive to learning, do we see that when K-8 students enter high school? Or are kids at that age better able to handle the transition?
It wouldn't surprise me if entering high school was also disruptive but I couldn't analyze that for two reasons. First, students in 9th and 10th grade don't take the SBAC so there's no data. Second, even if there were data, there are not enough public K-12 schools to do a comparison. If the data showed that students didn't learn much in 9th grade we wouldn't be able to tell whether that was because of changing school or because students just learn less from grade to grade (which appears to be true).
Makes sense. Thanks for the reply--and for your Substack, which is phenomenal. It's been an enormous help as we navigate SFUSD with a 14 and 17 year old and also just fun to see you dissect the data.
“Middle school” was awesome. But we had Junior High instead, 7-9. These age groups make more since I think. Too old for pooping pants elementary kids, too young to be hanging out with cig smoking seniors.
I can see the testing issues. Just cannot forget social and maturity factors here too. Age bands are good for development.
Do you think the number of new English language learners might be impacting the ELA scores of students in the K-5, 6-8, 9-12 public systems? If a number of children had English as a second language, this might explain the difference. Also, have you considered looking at graduation rates of K-5, 6-8, 9-12 systems vs. K-8, 9-12 systems? One of the primary purposes of middle school is to aid in the transition from elementary to the more complex environment of high school. It would be interesting to see if this were the case in the California context.
Smaller schools in general do a better job of educating children. Is this just the small school effect?
The evidence I have seen does not support the theory that smaller schools are better.
would love if you did your last analysis on various kinds of IEP catagories. I Suspect that kids qualifying under ASD or OHI and maybe even ED might do better in K8s. Kids with SLDs might do better in a K5/68 model.
It's impossible to do this analysis using public data, for two reasons. First, SBAC scores are only published for the umbrella category of "students with disabilities" and not for specific diagnoses. Second, SBAC scores are only published for subgroups with at least 10 students with scores (so if there are fewer than 10 Black 5th graders in a school, the school has no published score for Black 5th graders). To do what you want would require at least 10 students in 5th grade in an elementary school to have the disabilities you want to compare. There would be very few such schools and they would represent only a small fraction of the total population with those disabilities.
This is compelling data and validates a lot of the hard work we’re doing here to create a K to 8 mandarin immersion charter school:
https://www.dragongateacademy.org/