Grade span configurations
Kentucky School Advocate
May 2018
In Kentucky, there is a wide range of grade center configurations. There are 13 districts that use only one building, either up to eighth grade or through 12th grade. Of the remaining 160 districts,
86 percent have a 9-12 high school, by far the most common school
configuration.
After that, well, it’s complicated.
There are a dozen different grade configurations across the state involving sixth-grade classes. The most common is the traditional sixth-eighth middle school configuration, with 97 districts using that format. Ten other districts have sixth-grade students as the youngest in a building, either in a sixth-12th or sixth and seventh format.
In 38 districts, sixth graders are the oldest students in the building while 41 have that class somewhere in the middle.
Of the 23 districts that do not use the traditional 9-12
model, most have just a slight variation with a majority using either a
sixth-12th or seventh-12th model. Marion County has its eighth- and ninth-grade students in one building while Muhlenberg County Schools has its high school split into two buildings – 9-10 and 11-12.
Single trajectory
districts
Danville Independent Superintendent Keith Look noted that students moving from fifth grade to sixth and those moving from eighth to ninth are difficult transitions for students. When districts don’t have students in the same grade spread out across multiple schools, it makes the transition easier.
When Danville Independent’s new grade configuration takes effect this fall, there will be 70 districts in the state that has all of its students together at each grade level. Of the other 103 districts, 64 have only one middle school and high school.
More articles on the
topic
• National Public Radio examined a study by the American Educational Research Association that looked at experiences of sixth- through eighth-grade students in New York City at schools with different grade spans.
• The University of Minnesota’s Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement looked at the impact of transitions and different grade configurations on student achievement, student perceptions of psychological and social emotional outcomes, student behavior and teacher perceptions of students and of self and school characteristics.
• There are pluses and minuses with every grade configuration, and in most cases the decision to reconfigure is more pragmatic than philosophical.
Other links:
http://media.mlive.com/chronicle/news_impact/other/start-time%20study.pdf
http://www.educationalimpact.com/resources/msl/pdf/MidSchLead_2A_advantages.pdf