That’s how it was in San Diego. When I moved to Lancaster (LAUSD) jr. high was 7-8 and high school was 9-12.
Ah, that must be it. Most of the people I knew at that time were in West LA and the SF Valley, and my dad grew up in downtown LA. I guess other parts of the county did things differently. It is a very big county. It seems that most, if not all, of LA city schools have changed now from junior highs to middle schools, and if the Antelope Valley already did it that way, maybe all of LAUSD is consistent now.
The junior high school I attended in West Texas has since rebranded itself as a middle school. Still grades 7-9.
In fact, the middle school movement of the 60s-80s advocated a more person/student-centered structure and philosophy. Many used team teaching - i.e. assigning a large group, a team, of kids to a multi-disciplinary team of teachers. There was more emphasis on projects, collaboration, integrated and coherent curriculum. Middle schools were considerably less grade oriented and more process oriented. The feel of the middle schools was quite different from the junior high school. Frequently, middle schools built in electives, where that was much more rare in junior high schools. The idea was that in order to be an effective school, the teachers had to know their students well. They were not simply products to be turned out like factory pieces. These qualities were, of course, in greater or lesser degrees depending on the location, as many above has attested. The mid to late 80’s saw a change, an increased emphasis on quantification - of everything, including education, which led to the standardized testing movement that still prevails. And students were being educated to fit into a world economy. They were not learning via experience. A teacher’s grade of a student meant less and less, and the standardized test came to mean everything. That emphasis on data, comparing schools, assessing teachers, etc. made the middle school philosophy a misfit and many schools called middle schools changed their structures and functions to meet the demands of that testing. Many curricular areas were dropped or reduced so that there could be more time for reading and math, the two areas that are typically used for these evaluations. Very few school systems today could promote a style of teaching and learning that was so little reliant on data. So, regardless of what a building is called, what counts today is how the school is organized and run, and that is predominantly the data-driven junior high model.
CC
School districts sometimes need to adjust things depending on their facilities. In a former school district for kanicson there was k-2 elementary, 3-5 Intermediate school, 6-8 jr high, 9-12 high. Mainly due to growth of the district cause them to outgrow their buildings but still had to use them. Then closing the elementary building and building a extension on the intermediate school, school building in it’s entirety became a elementary school k-5 with a internal division of k-2 and 3-5.