For decades, school districts have sorted students into neat grade groupings: K–5, 6–8, 9–12. But those lines have blurred.
Some districts are reviving stand-alone middle schools. Others are phasing them out. In between, students and their teachers are caught in models that don’t always meet their needs.
Data from the National Center for Education Statistics show that traditional K-5 elementary schools and 9-12 high schools remain the most common grade configurations. But K-8 schools have grown in popularity—jumping from 2,500 nationwide in 1994 to about 7,000 in 2024.
“There are some states where the predominant model is a K-8 elementary school, even served under a separate district,” said Katie Powell, the director for middle-level programs at the Association for Middle Level Education, an international education association with over 30,000 members around the U.S. and other countries. “There are other states where the predominant model is a 7th-8th grade junior high building. There are states where there is no consistent model whatsoever.”
By the early 20th century, most buildings split students between grades 8 and 9, according to researchers from the Columbia Business School. But in the 1920s, the concept of “junior high schools” serving 7th and 8th graders took off, and the 1970s brought “middle schools” covering grades 6 to 8.
The middle school model: Space for early adolescents
Advocates of the middle school model say that it enables early adolescents to receive specialized support. A 2005 survey cited by the Middle School Journal—which mailed questionnaires to 304 random K-8 schools in the U.S., with 33% returned surveys—found that over 80% of K-8 principals preferred the middle school model.
In Cincinnati, the district formerly operated primarily K-8 and 9-12 schools, Superintendent Shauna Murphy said. Based on teacher licensure and certification standards, the district partially transitioned to a 7-12 model in the early 2010s, Murphy added. But last year, Cincinnati began implementing middle schools.
“The middle grades tend to underperform compared to their elementary or high school counterparts,” Powell said. “This is such a nuanced and complicated stage of development that the needs of kids in middle grades and of the educators serving middle-grade students are more complex.”
When the Cincinnati public schools followed a K-8 model, Murphy said they would end up with 12-year-old and 5-year-old students on the same yellow school buses. “It just didn’t fit very well,” she added. The 7-12 model created a reverse problem: Early adolescents were lumped in with young adults.
Research from the University of Virginia suggests that 6th and 7th grade students have higher mathematics and reading passing rates when housed in elementary schools rather than middle schools. Switching from a traditional elementary and middle school model to a K-8 system is linked to a 0.1 standard deviation test-score gain, or "$10,000 lifetime earnings gain per student,” according to research by The Hamilton Project.
But in Cincinnati, Murphy says they’ve seen the opposite. After opening Shroder Middle School last year, the city enjoyed “a huge increase in student state test scores for both 7th and 8th grade.” A spokesperson for the district wrote in an email to Education Week that preliminary state data indicate growth in four out of five tested achievement areas. Specific data will be released in mid-September.
In fiscal 2026, Murphy said they will open five new middle and junior high schools.
Navigating the transition to a new building
According to a Princeton University study, achievement tends to fall immediately after building transitions, which could explain part of the dip when students enter middle school. Still, data reported by Education Partnerships, an organization that consults with educators on school management issues, stated that grade configuration was not a predictor of student achievement.
“The idea of the transition being a negative thing—it could be. But we know how to make it a positive thing,” said Mary Beth Schaefer, an associate professor of adolescent education at St. John’s University in Queens, N.Y., whose research focuses on the middle grades. Implementing best practices to support students undergoing changes can help.
Schaefer recommended instituting bridge programs that introduce younger students to the middle school environment, buddy systems that pair students across grade levels, and advisory periods where students meet with adult mentors to talk about their socio-emotional needs.
“If a student is not seen and acknowledged, if people don’t know that student’s name—that’s when a lot of problems happen,” Schaefer said. “The middle school model works when it’s implemented robustly and correctly because it … strives to help every single student be seen and heard.”
• Buddy systems: partnering older and younger students can ease the transition to middle school.
• Teaching teams: grouping teachers across subject areas into small teams can help create a sense of belonging for middle schoolers.
• Advisory periods: socioemotional-focused advisory blocks can support students undergoing transitions and change.
• Bridge programs: introducing students to the physical environment they will face when entering middle or high school increases preparedness.
Student experience also differs depending on the grade-configuration model. According to Hanover Research, K-8 schools tend to be less racially and socioeconomically diverse than middle schools, but students report higher self-esteem in K-8 schools.
In 7-12 schools, students tend to have more access to advanced coursework, but teachers tend to be responsible for teaching a much broader range of material.
“If you have a 12th grade teacher who needs another class, the 12th grade teacher is going to teach one section of 7th grade English—you could see it happening, because it would make fiscal sense,” said Schaefer.
What leads districts to reconfigure grade spans?
Research from the University of Central Florida indicates that factors like financial resources and geographic location are primary drivers of reconfiguration.
Schaefer says she fears that “the unique needs of these students [will] be subsumed under the fiscal needs of the school and school district” and that middle-grade-specific training will decline.
In Cincinnati, Murphy said that by balancing out enrollment levels across schools and changing transportation systems, the district has actually managed to save $4 million from the introduction of middle schools and their broader redesign plan.
For some districts, the decision to switch configurations is based primarily on enrollment shifts, said Powell of the Association for Middle Level Education. “The distribution of bodies across buildings seems to be a driving factor,” she added. If a district is seeing a decline in middle-grade enrollment, it might choose to merge middle schools into underenrolled high school or elementary school buildings.
“The way that could work is by creating these teams of teachers who are dedicated to the middle school,” Schaefer said. “It would be really important to have a school counselor who is steeped in middle school.”
In another example, Powell referenced, as Indianapolis’ neighborhood demographics shifted, neighborhood K-8 schools wound up unintentionally segregated. Indianapolis public schools restructured to implement consistent grade banding to enable a districtwide school choice program where families can choose to send their students to K-5 and 6-8 schools anywhere within a dedicated zone.
The middle grades restructuring was part of a larger reorganization plan called “Rebuilding Stronger.” In a blog, the district described the plan as making “our system more equitable by dividing our district into four zones, each of them roughly reflecting our district’s diversity by race and income.”
IPS did not respond to a request for comment.
As districts transition models, middle-grade students, teachers, and administrators are shuffled between buildings—often navigating changing school schedules, forms of transportation, and spatial resources.
Difficult as all that is, it’s even more so, Murphy said, without the support of families.
“Be fully aware of the landscape of your community,” she said. “Families love their schools, they love their teachers, they love their principals. And engaging the community takes a lot of work, and it’s not a one-and-done.”
