Retired Teacher: Abolish Middle School

[fishwax]

7. the district I grew up in had elementary, middle school, junior high, and high school

It's definitely not the same everywhere, but the middle school model (with middle school usually including 6-8 or 7-9) is, I believe, the most common model nationwide. The most common model used to be the junior high school model, which had k-6 elementary schools, 7-8 (or 7-9) junior high schools, and then high schools. This started taking root in the early 20th century and was the norm for most districts after WWII, until the middle school model started to emerge in the 60s and 70s.

There are other differences between the basic idea of a junior high and a middle school other than the grade ranges. For instance, a common middle school organization has students divided into separate units (they were called "clusters" where I went to school) based around core subjects. So all the students in a given cluster would take math, science, english, and social studies from the same four instructors. For classes outside the core (music, PE, art, etc.) students from different clusters would frequently be in the same classroom. The idea was that the cluster, operating as a smaller community within the bigger school, would provide a smoother transition from the single-classroom elementary experience to the larger pool of high school instructors and classmates.

In my district, it was K-5 in elementary, 6-7 in middle school, 8-9 in junior high, and then 10-12 in high school. But later after I graduated they switched back to a junior high model, with 6 going back to elementary and 7 moving to junior high with the 8th and (I think) 9th graders. Ninth graders could, in most cases, participate in high school athletics and some other extracurricular activities (speech, show choir, etc.) if they were talented enough, even though they didn't go to the same physical school and there was also (for major sports) a separate freshman team.