My elementary school was K-5 with half-day kindergarten. There were two classes per grade, and starting in 4th grade some students would switch teachers for math and maybe science too. There was definitely something of a team approach to teaching in 4th and 5th grades, especially with extra curriculars and special subjects.
Middle school was 6-8 and it was structured like high school, so students didn’t really stay together, though I think in 6th grade we did have first period homeroom. It might’ve only been a half period, because there would be times later in the morning when the bell would ring and depending on which class/grade you were in you’d just ignore every other one, at least for the first half of the day or so (I think it synced up over lunch). Interestingly, one elementary school fed into my middle school, but those students went to a different high school. Kind of a bummer to make middle school friends who don’t go to high school with you.
High school was 9-12 and 9th graders were freshman (or frosh, which is a term I still hate). We also had a first period homeroom in 9th grade, but other than that it was still full-on high school.
Where I live now there are only elementary schools (PreK-6) and high schools (7-12) in the city district. However, the 7th and 8th graders are sometimes kept in a separate junior high wing of the high school so they’re not thrown totally to the wolves. At least that’s generally the case with the larger more standard college-prep focused schools. There’s some smaller K-12, Montessori, and arts/performing focused schools that aren’t as regimented.
In the 35 years I’ve been with my district, we’ve done just about every configuration. When I started, it was K-5, then 6-8 at the junior high, with high school getting 9-12. Then when things got crowded, we kicked the 9th graders off onto their own campus and set up middle schools for 6-8. After doubling the size of the high school we brought the freshmen back and turned the 9th grade campus (which used to be the junior high) into a continuation school.
When I went to school in the 80s in my rural district the elementary school was K through 6 and the high school was 7 through 12.
When I was in 7th grade the school district built a new high school and the configuration became:
Elementary school: K thru 4
Middle School (in old high school building): 5 thru 8
New High School: 9 thru 12
In the old configuration there were at least two cases where 7th graders became pregnant and had babies. And at least one other became pregnant and had an abortion. They were all impregnated by high schoolers so there were a lot of complaints about needing to separate junior high ad high school.
(The main motivation for building the new school though was the old high school was just too crowded and needed more space.)
My district started out as K-6, 7-9, 10-12, with 7-9 being “junior high”.
But after my 9th grade year they changed to K-5, 6-8, 9-12, with 6-8 being “middle school”. So I never had to be part of the youngest class in high school!
My kid’s current school is K-8; all high schools in the district are 9-12, but there are some schools that are just K-5 or just 6-8. The 6-8 cohort is called “middle school” and have their own floor of the building. There is no special name for the 4-5 cohort, but they also have their own floor separate from the K-3s.
Here in Chicago, I grew up with no concept of middle school or even really jr. high. Schools are typically K-8 (primary/elementary/grammar schools), 9-12 (secondary/high schools). We might have called grades 7-8 “jr. high.” but I was really introduced to the concept as a separate “school” watching Wonder Years growing up. Both my daughters are currently in two different schools that are K-8. I’m not even sure if there is a middle school or junior high in the city. There very well may be, but it’s something I associate more with the suburbs and the great beyond. I cannot think of a high school that does not start at 9th grade. In my mind, it is cemented as a four-year institution with grades called “freshman/sophomore/junior/senior” and not being referred to by number, generally.
Another configuration has all three: K-4 elementary school, 5-6 middle school, 7-9 junior high, 10-12 high school. Though I’ve also heard the 5-6 called an elementary school, even though it doesn’t cover all elementary grades.
The current trend seems to be dividing everything into four year groups (with Kindergarten either tacked on to 1–4, in its own separate building, or even occasionally together with some preschool programs). And, when you have three groups, it makes sense that the middle one (5–8) is called middle school. And it allows all four named grades of high school (freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior) to be together.
It also seems more common to divide up by region in places with more than one school, rather than split the grades up even more.
That’s exactly how it is where I grew up. The school I attended was called a junior high school and was 7-9. Since then, it’s been renamed to a middle school and is only 7-8.
Our town was a function of population and available space.
When I lived there, it was 3 elementary schools K-1, 2-3, 4-5 (as of when I left - it was originally split K-2, K-5, K-5 by neighborhood when I started 1st grade) then middle school for 6-7, then Jr High 8-9, then High school 10-12.
They shuffled which grades went to which schools a couple times while I was growing up, especially elementary school which had been de facto segregated on each side of the railroad tracks well into the 90s.
Haven’t lived there in a while, but the population dropped not long after I went off to college and after a couple more reshuffles, it’s now 5-8 Middle and 9-12 High with the old Jr High now defunct.
Went to school in the 60’s - early 70’s in Toronto. Grade school was 1-8. High school was 9-13 (later, to 12). About when I was in Grade 8, they built a pair of schools down the road (never went there) called Junior high and senior high schools. I see now on Google Earth it’s amalgamated and called a secondary school, 10-12 and middle school 6-9 according to Wikipedia.
There was never a significant distinction of “Junior High” vs. Senior High" in my experience back then. I see the same pattern in a lot of schools - Grade school or elementary school is 1-8, and Secondary is 9-12.
Nobody ever used the terms freshman, junior, etc. I assumed they only applied to University until much later.
Okay, I’ll throw a bit of a wrench into the terminology…
In Ontario when I was growing up, K-6 were public (formally, “elementary”) school. There were neighbourhood public schools scattered across town, within walking distance of most areas.
In the town where we lived, grades 7 and 8 were hived off into a separate “senior public” school. All kids in town and from localities beyond went to grades 7 and 8 in this school. There was a graduation ceremony at the end of grade 8.
Then high school (formally, “secondary school”) started with grade 9. The kids scattered to different high schools.
There was a little use of the term “freshmen” or (plural, or as a group) “frosh” at the beginning of grade 9, but this didn’t last. The term “minor niner” was more common. The terms “sophomore”, “junior” and “senior” were not used. I wonder whether this was in part because many students went on to the optional fifth year of high school, grade 13, which was intended for students going on to university. (I believe that Ontario universities expected this, and students from jurisdictions without the equivalent of grade 13 had to take an additional year of university.)
There was a graduation ceremony and high school diploma at the end of grade 12, and another “honours” diploma at the end of grade 13.
So our system went: K-6 public school, 7-8 senior public school, 9-12 (13) high school.
The senior public school might have been a local thing though. I believe it was changed, even before grade 13 was eliminated.
Yeah - that is what I remembered from when my kids were in school. Middle school was a newer term supposedly describing some great coordination among the teachers and such. In practice, it was complete BS.
I’m like puly - a product of CPS, where it has always been K-8. The parochial schools were the same. Junior High was just one more of them fancy things the rich suburban kids had!
When I was in school, the public school system had grades K-6 in a “public school” , 7-9 in junior high school and 9-12 were in high schools ( I will explain). At some point, it changed so that “public schools” held grades K-5 and grades 6,7,8 were in either “intermediate schools” or “middle schools”.
Even when most public school students attended 9th grade in the junior high schools , the high schools also had 9th grade. In some cases, it was because specialized high schools admitted new students in 9th grade so students would leave the junior high school and go to high school for 9th grade. But most of the high schools had ninth grade because parochial schools ended at 8th grade, and in those days plenty of kids who went to Catholic or Lutheran schools until 8th grade attended public high schools starting in 9th grade.
I was a student with elementary K-6, junior high 7-8, and high school 9-12. We even had a graduation ceremony for 8th grade: it was the end of primary education! The diploma was an insert in a cheap plastic holder, but they had the whole ceremony (but no robes/caps/tassels). A small number of students, mostly from farm families, stopped attending after 8th grade.
My granddaughter, now in 5th grade, will be at a middle school next year: 6-7-8, and then high school 9-12. This seems pretty common here in Minnesota.
In the late 70s I went to GeographicFeature Junior High which was 7-8.
The first year (7), we had the 6 classes/6 teachers setup and went room to room.
By the next year (8) Prop 13 had passed in California and school budgets were slashed to the bone. We changed to the one teacher with multiple subjects in the morning, then electives in different rooms/teachers in the afternoon setup.
According to my parents, the school was renamed SomePerson Middle School in the 90s. The district also changed to a 6-7-8 set up.
There’s no consistency in the terminology. When I was a kid, the typical setup in Cleveland and the surrounding districts was some schools K-3, some 4-6 (both of those called elementary schools), some 7-8 (called junior high), and some 9-12 (but even at that, there was at least one school in the Cleveland system that was 6-12). Now, most districts in the area have something like “elementary school” from K-2 or 3, “Intermediate school” 3 or 4-5, “middle school” 6-8, and “high school” 9-12. Cleveland itself, meanwhile, currently has nothing but K-8 “elementary schools” and 9-12 “high schools”. But I’ve also seen “middle schools” that were 5-8 or 7-8, and “middle school” and “high school” combined in one building (though usually different wings), and in the combined buildings, sometimes 8th is in the “high school” wing and sometimes 9th is in the “middle school” wing.
Way back when I began applying for university, I discovered that the schools I was interested in considered “high school academic record” to be for grades 7 through 12. When I moved to China, I was fascinated that the Chinese term for ‘junior high school’ is ‘lower middle school’ and ‘senior high school’ is ‘upper middle school’. It took me a while to get used to it, once I realized it makes sense:
Primary school = 1 ~ 6
Secondary school = 7 ~ 12
Tertiary school = college/university
So secondary school can be divided into whatever the local school district wishes; it’s still all secondary school.
I attended school in California and Oregon, all of the 90s and into the 2000s.
The last school district I attended in northern California placed students in elementary school until 6th grade, then shipped them off to “intermediate” school for grades 7 and 8. From there they went to high school. I knew of one school in the area that was K-8.
In Oregon I attended a middle school that served grades 6 through 8, but I was only there for the last two. I went to high school for grades 9-12. As far as I know all the schools in the area were either elementary school (K-5), middle school (6-8), high school (9-12), or served at least two of those categories. One school serving 6-12 was called a “junior/senior” high school.
I teach at a middle school that (in an average year) has about 300 kids in each grade, 6th through 8th. They’re split into two teams (I’m team 801). I have five core history classes each day, those 150 kids all have the same science and Spanish teachers, and the vast majority have the same English and math teachers (there is a small amount of cross teaming for PreAP/co-taught [SPED support] English and Geometry/Algebra I/co-taught pre-Algebra).
Students mix between teams during electives, and teams are reshuffled each year as they switch grades.
This (at least in theory), lets the team of five teachers get to know our students better and support them over the course of the year. Each teacher also has a matching teacher in the same subject who they can lesson plan with.
Additionally, we have three counselors and administrators, who rotate up the grades with the same kids. So my 8th graders this year have had the same counselor and assistant principal as the primary person they (and their parents) see when there are issues. That generally makes things easier, as relationships and trust can last.
In a junior high model, there’s a lot less emphasis on teaming, and I wouldn’t be able to expect that then English and math teachers next door to me both have the same student that I’m having issues with for us to trouble shoot it together (very similar to high school scheduling).
Almost every district in my area keeps 9-12 on the same campus, but the majority also have a Freshman Academy that keeps 9th graders isolated (barring electives) in their own area of the school (sometimes building if it makes sense construction wise) to try and break them into high school with a minimum of 9th grade immaturity bothering upperclassmen (and also upperclassmen who can’t get dates their own age bothering 15 year olds).
Locally, a few districts are opening Intermediate Schools for 5th and 6th grade (and then MS is only 7/8). My district doesn’t, but I understand that 5th is often too old to lump with K/1st. And in my experience, 6th is noticeably less mature than 7/8. I’m not really sure what their scheduling/teaming model looks like though.
