A video on the growing dilemma of how to successfully educate middle schoolers discusses doing away with middle schools altogether. One possibility is to keep students in elementary school through the 8th grade. Another choice is to house 6th through 12th graders together. The article on nytimes.com describes schools that are taking the leap and moving away from the middle school experience.
Should the nurturing cocoon of elementary school be extended for another three years, shielding 11-year-olds from the abrupt transition to a new school, with new students and teachers, at one of the most volatile times in their lives?
Paul Vallas, chief executive of the Philadelphia school system, thinks so, and he has closed 17 traditional middle schools since 2002, while converting some three dozen elementary schools into K-8s. “The fifth to sixth grade transition is just too traumatic,” he said. “At a time when children are undergoing emotional, physical, social changes, and when they need stability and consistency, suddenly they’re thrust into this alien environment.”
The 6th- through 12th-grade school is less common, and less studied. In New York City, where such schools have proliferated — 38 have opened since 2002 — the shift is being driven largely by nonprofit organizations that have helped start new, small schools. These schools are under pressure to show they can produce better results than traditional ones.
In many ways these schools were conceived less as a solution to the middle school problem than as solutions to the high school problem — that is, the problem of having just four years to work magic with woefully underprepared freshmen.
It sounds to me like we might be heading back to the one room school house. I would be concerned for the younger students in either scenario. They might hear and see things that are way beyond their years.