# Middle, high, elementary, grade schools? HUH? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 1, 2001, 2:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660 "2001-02-01T02:35:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/21 "2001-02-01T04:46:45Z")
And I completely forgot about the Catholic schools… but I didn’t and don’t know much about them. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/22 "2001-02-01T04:55:28Z")
**Buffalo (city) public schools, some suburban public school districts and all Niagara Frontier private and parochial schools** Elementary school – Kindergarten (0) through grade 8 High school – grade 9 through 12 (Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior) **Buffalo suburban public schools (others)** Elementary school – Kindergarten (0) through grade 6 Middle school – grade 7 through 9 High school – grade 10 through 12 In Buffalo, there are some magnet high schools that include two or more grades below grade 9/Freshman (City Honors School, Buffalo Traditional School, Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts). St. Joseph _Collegiate Institute_ is a Catholic high school. Springville-Griffith _Institute_ is a public high school. No “grade 13” south of the border, although most schools have more intensive “college prep” and “advanced placement” programs through the normal three or four years of high school. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/23 "2001-02-01T04:59:51Z")
\> No “grade 13” south of the border I take that back. Some Buffalo vocational high schools, at least in the '80s, had “grade 13.” You graduated at the end of 12th grade, but studied for professional certification in a chosen field at the school for an additional year. It wasn’t an Ontario-style college prep grade 13, though. ---
**Author:** ![Kyla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/eada6e/32.png) [@Kyla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyla)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/24 "2001-02-01T09:29:48Z")
The first school I attended was K-5. Grades 6-8 were middle school, and 9-12 were high school. When I moved, I attended an elementary school that was K-6, a junior high that was 7&8 and a high school that was 9-12. Additionally, in a nearby town, they have a couple junior highs that are 7&8 and a couple others that are 7-9. Which one you attend depends on personal choice and location, I assume. All three of these school districts are in a 50 mile area in Northern California. A friend of mine went to high school at an exclusive-ish boarding school in New Hampshire, where she stayed on an extra year. I don’t think that they called it grade 13, but I imagine it’s fairly similar - she said she decided to do it to raise her SAT scores and make sure she was ready for college. She told me that staying on for an extra year was pretty common at this school. ---
**Author:** ![Badtz\_Maru](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e36b37/32.png) [@Badtz\_Maru](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Badtz_Maru)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 12:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/25 "2001-02-01T12:42:31Z")
In Sapulpa, Oklahoma, it was like this… K-5 - Elementary School 6-7 - Middle School 8-9 - Junior High (also known as Freshman School) 10-12 - Senior High I moved to Mesquite, TX, where it was… K-6 - Elementary School 7-8 - Middle School 9-12 - High School THEN I moved to Greenville, TX, where it was even weirder K-4 - Elementary School 5-6 - Intermediate School 7-8 - Middle School 9-12 - High School ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/26 "2001-02-01T14:55:39Z")
> [@](#): > > _Originally posted by Sunspace_ > Grade 13 was an optional year for students going on to university. If I can try to clarify, **Sunspace** , Grade 13 wasn’t optional for those going to an Ontario university; rather, it was mandatory. Ontario students needed to submit Grade 13 marks to the Ontario universities they applied to before they would even be considered for admission. And I suppose Grade 13 marks didn’t hurt when applying to non-Ontario universities–I had a couple of high school classmates who were placed in second year classes at other province’s/state’s universities because they went through Ontario’s Grade 13. But if you didn’t want to apply to a university, then Grade 13 was optional. You could graduate from Grade 12 and get your high school diploma without Grade 13. And IIRC, a Grade 12 diploma was all you needed for admission to a community college. Note that I’m not talking about mature students at all here–the rules for those students were different. ---
**Author:** ![Odieman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a87d85/32.png) [@Odieman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odieman)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/27 "2001-02-01T15:04:07Z")
In our town in Saskatchewan it was Elementary Gr 1-6 Junior High Gr 7-9 High School Gr 10-12 Keith ---
**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/28 "2001-02-01T15:18:18Z")
I think we’ve pretty safely established that there are many ways to organize schools. Is there a General Question still on the table? ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/29 "2001-02-01T15:19:39Z")
What, no educational psychologists around? As we were shepherding the Kunilou kids through the lower grades, the missus and I did a fair amount of committee and volunteer work with the school district, and here’s how they explained it to us: The whole system of breaking up the grades has to do with the student’s physical, mental and social developemt. The people who get paid big bucks for thinking this stuff up have pretty much decided that students up to Grade 5 (roughly through age 11) and Grade 10 and after (roughly age 16 and up) can be grouped together. The difficulty rises in Grades 6-9 where kids are hitting adolescence at different speeds. As anyone who has seen a group of these kids at the mall can attest, some 9th graders look like tots, while you’d be afraid to meet some 6th graders in a dark alley. So there are basically three options, and no clear consensus as to which is “right” or most appropriate: Put 6th grade in with the “elementary” or “primary” grades, group grades 7-9 together in a junior high school, or Group grades 6-8 together in a “middle” or “intermediate” school and put grade 9 in high school Keep grades 7-8 together, and put 9th grade in with high school. There are other weird offshoots, like putting grades 5-6 and 7-8 in separate buildings, but the general idea is that young adolescents are different than both their older and younger siblings. What a given school district does usually depends on which theory is in vogue at the time, what kinds of facilities and staff they can throw into the mix, and input from the parents/taxpayers. ---
**Author:** ![lolagranola](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ea5d25/32.png) [@lolagranola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lolagranola)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/30 "2001-02-01T15:41:50Z")
Another Canadian here. Alberta, to be exact. The way it was growing up, and the way it is for my children, is: Elementary school: grades 1-6 Junior high: grades 7-9 High school: grades 10-12 Unlike **brad\_d** , ninth grade did not show up on my high school transcripts. Only my 10, 20 and 30 level subjects show up, and those are grades 10-12. ---
**Author:** ![Bear\_Nenno](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bear_nenno/32/3358_2.png) [@Bear\_Nenno](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bear_Nenno)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 3:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/31 "2001-02-01T15:42:47Z")
Up until about four or five years ago, this school district was: [Each listing was a SEPERATE SCHOOL] K-5 = Elementary (also called grade school) 6th grade 7th grade 8th + 9th= Junior High 10th- 12th= High School Yes, there was five seperate schools. Now they have recently changed to: K-5 = Elementary 6th-8th = Middle School 9th-12th = High School There is about 180 schools in the district right now. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2001, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/32 "2001-02-01T22:23:31Z")
Believe it or not, one of my many arcane interests is the history of public schools, especially high schools, in the U.S. I am actually the proud owner of a vintage 1923 student semi-annual souvenir book from Los Angeles High School. From this and other sources, I’ve gotten the impression that in the old days, we only used to speak of \*grades \* 1 through 8, then after that it was _classes_, in order, freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior. Educators of the day would worry about whether freshmen “coming up from the grades” were properly prepared for high school work, or whether poorly performing freshmen should be “sent down to the grades”. Up to about 40 or 50 years ago I don’t think anyone ever spoke of being in the “12th grade”; they would have always said they were in the senior class. Nowadays we hear both, though everyone still seems to understand the old class names. ---
**Author:** ![SSgtBaloo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac91a4/32.png) [@SSgtBaloo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SSgtBaloo)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/33 "2001-02-02T03:23:24Z")
I went to school in a lot of different places (we moved a lot until I was nine). Most places (northern California) were groupedas follows:[list=1][li]Elementary = K-6[_]Junior High = 7 & 8[_]High School = 9-12[/list=1][/li] Of course, there were some exceptions. When we lived in Mineral (a tiny burgh that bristled at the appropriate label of “village”), we had a two-room school house. Each room had one teacher. One taught the “lower grades” and the other taught the “upper grades”. The lower grades were either K-5 or 1-5 (I don’t think there were any 5-year-olds in town the 2 years we lived there, so I can’t be certain) and the upper grades were 6-8 or 6-9 (It’s been a while – I forget). ~~Baloo ---
**Author:** ![stuyguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ec9cab/32.png) [@stuyguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stuyguy)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/34 "2001-02-02T04:49:04Z")
From the Dept. of Picky Sticklers: Several posters have called lower-grade schools “Public Schools” (an easy assumption from the common P.S. nomenclature, like say, “my kid goes to P.S. 121”). But more often than not, **P.S. = Primary School,** not Public School ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/35 "2001-02-02T06:03:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by javaman \* > \*\*Believe it or not, one of my many arcane interests is the history of public schools, especially high schools, in the U.S. \*\* Then you of course know of the Beverly High School controversy. And if you don’t, then I’m not really that up on it enough to explain it. But I went to Beverly High in Mass. Our system was (and is): 8 Elementary schools (K-5) 2 Middle schools (6-8) 1 High school (9-12) ---
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2001, 7:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660/36 "2001-02-02T07:10:48Z")
> [@](#): > > _ **Spoons** said:_ > But if you didn’t want to apply to a university, then Grade 13 was optional. Actually, that’s precisely what I meant. Thanks for clarifying. I remember plenty of people leaving school after grade 12 and getting jobs at GM or whatever and then starting to make money, buy cars, etc, while we struggled on in grade 13. For me it was art, 3 maths, physics, chemistry, and French… > [@](#): > > _ **javaman** said:_ > I’ve gotten the impression that in the old days, we only used to speak of grades 1 through 8, then after that it was classes… In Ontario we always said ‘grade X’ rather than ‘Xth grade’. Also, we never used terms such as freshman, sophomore, and so on. If you hadn’t just explained them, I’d have to look up ‘sophomore’. See [An American’s Guide to Canada](http://www.icomm.ca/emily/academia.html) for more vocabulary differences. It told me what a ‘parochial’ school was, for instance. We never used freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior in university either (at least at Waterloo University), except in the very general sense of each new crop of students from high school in September being collectively known as ‘frosh’. I suspect partly this was because some of the programs were more than four years long; architecture was six, for example. We always used Xth-year to describe students in standard programs where there were two four-month terms of study (starting in September), and then four months off during the following summer to recuperate or get a job. Some students were in ‘co-op’ programs, where after the first year or so, four-month study terms alternated with four-month work terms, to gain experience in the workplace. The designation of which year you were in got a little more complex because it didn’t necessarily sync with the calendar year anymore. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/middle-high-elementary-grade-schools-huh/52660.md?page=1)