Do Schools with 1 or 2 Grade Levels Make Sense?

Someone in the TLN discussion group asked:

My school district is thinking of changing to grade level centers. One school would have all of the district's PK-1st grade students. One school would have all of the 3rd and 4th graders. One school would have all of the 5th graders. We have two middle schools and only one high school.

The superintendent supports this idea, believing it will save money and encourage collaboration. Does anyone in our group have research or experience with grade-level centers?

Another TLN member (from a small school district) replied:

My district did this several years back -- sliced the system into 2-grade buildings. It was done because we were growing rapidly and needed a new middle school and a new elementary building, and there was fear that parents wouldn't vote for a bond issue to build a new building unless their child could attend school there.

There is no research that I know of that supports this sorting out of grade levels as being "good for kids." Based on our experience, I can think of several reasons NOT to do it:

1. Parents suddenly have kids in multiple buildings. My next door neighbor, who had four children, had to attend conferences in the K-2 building, the 3-4 building, the 5-6 building and the 7-8 building, all in one year. Not to mention Open Houses, concerts, basketball games, etc. If you have no more than two children, your kids are still continuously in different buildings -- there is never a "home" building that becomes your family's school base.

2. The residual knowledge that a teaching staff has, as a child moves through the grades in that building, is lost every time the child goes to a new building. I know that records transfer, but the informal conversations -- "you had Jason in first grade -- was he acting out then?"-- don't happen when Jason's new teachers are in a different building.

3. Every time a child moves to a new building, there are transition issues--finding your way around, feeling comfortable with new rules, a new principal, new cafeteria procedures, new bathrooms. Transitions are rough anyway--why build in more of them?

4. You drastically reduce the role-modeling opportunities that develop when you have a K-5, 6-8, 9-12 sort of school structure. In a K-5 school, certain privileges and leadership roles may be established for older kids-- safety patrol, student council, reading buddies, etc. These opportunities are good for kids, letting them feel responsibility and accomplishment. Conversely, when you have only two grades in a building, the worst qualities of that age group are accentuated. In a 9th grade building, for example, there are no college-bound seniors, no varsity volleyball team, no accomplished musicians and artists headed off to fine arts programs, no National Merit scholars. In our 9th grade building, you could smell the untempered hormones in the hallway, and there was nobody to look up to – no sense of what was next.

5. Having a 5/6 and a 7/8 school, instead of two 5/8 buildings, means only one basketball team, one chorus, one school play, one student council, etc.. There are fewer chances to shine (and it may bump your 7/8 up into a new athletic class). Smaller, multi-grade schools mean lots more things to try out and less competition for opportunities. This is the principle behind the small schools movement.

6. Finally, there’s reason to be skeptical of the "extra year of childhood" argument. My school said that 6th and 8th graders didn't belong in the same building--they were too developmentally different, and the 6th graders deserved an extra year of just being kids. What happened, of course, is that the unstoppable, burgeoning adolescence of the 6th graders impacted the 5th graders, their new classmates.

7. Oh — and one other thing. How will this save money?

In a later post, a member of the TLN discussion group noted research by Sanders and Horn which William L. Sanders summarized in this 1998 article from School Administrator magazine:

The effect of building-level change: When populations of students change buildings, the expected loss in academic gain the first year after the change is large (averaging 15 to 30 percent), with few exceptions observed across the state. Receiving schools do not have a good handle on where the feeder schools have ended their instruction, which results in much unnecessary reteaching. A compensatory effect in gain shows up the following year, but this effect does not negate the academic loss the first year after the change.

The poster noted that "if this research holds water, it's reasonable to wonder about the effect of changing schools every year on two on academic progress."