Went to school in Montgomery County, MD. Elementary school was 1-5, I attended 6th grade at a middle school, then transferred into a magnet program in a different zone and attended an intermediate school that was 7-8, then high school for 9-12.
I went to school in one of the Cleveland/Akron suburbs **Chronos **mentioned and mine was the second class to go to Middle School in 6th grade. So it transitioned in 1991 to 6-8, where it had previously been 7-8.
They put us on the third floor of the Jr. High building which had previously been closed off. What I remember most about 6th grade was that it was very very hot (no A/C) and lunch & gym were very far away (in the basement).
My brother’s class, 2 years ahead of me, was the last class to have kindergarten at a central school instead of the neighborhood elementary school. His best friends, who he’d met in kindergarten, didn’t go to elementary school with him, which was very unique in our district.
Now our district has k-3 neighborhood elementaries, a 4-5 building, 6-8 middle school and 9-12 high school. It’s all about population, really.
Same in Hawaii. This would have been 1990-91 for me.
This is more or less the explanation I heard locally. I was in the last class to graduate while my HS was still a 10-12 school. The following year, the school district changed the schools to K-5, 6-8, and 9-12, and the “junior high schools” were re-termed “middle schools”.
I went Catholic school (graduated HS mid-80s) and ours was:
primary school: K-4
middle school: 5-8
high school: 9-12
but the public school kids did elementary school through 6th grade, junior high 7-9 and high school 10-12. We had a bunch of kids on ninth grade who then went to public high school for the other three years.
I don’t believe 6th graders and Kindergarten students should intermingle without restriction. I had a 6th grader assault a girl in the girl’s room, so I’ve seen the bad side of K-6 schools.
Now schools are looking at reform, and one possible reform is to get rid of the concept of grades in two senses:
a.) Students are grouped by ability level (students are spend much of the day in personalized learning, so individual needs are much clearer and easily addressed) rather than age. That way, we don’t have students reading at 1st-6th grade levels all put together in the same classroom all day.
b.) report cards no longer use A,B,C,D and F to indicate student progress and achievement. How do you grade a student in 4th grade who is at a first grade level a grade in reading? She is working hard, and showing growth in her reading skills, but she is doing 1st grade level work. Is that an A or an F? And you really can’t put a 10-year-old in a 1st grade room all day long.
I don’t know how school buildings will have to change to accommodate grouping reforms, but I suspect the ever-shuffling elementary/middle/junior high/senior high system will be replaced.
We moved and I changed high schools after 10th grade. My first HS was in a “special” district. 4 or 5 elementary schools fed 1 jr high at 7th grade. A parochial (k-8) fed into the jr high at 9th. Sr high was 10-12. The year after I moved, the Sr High went to 9-12. Don’t know what they did with the Jr High. I was in the class of 73.
Second HS for me was in a citywide district. At least 3 jr highs fed into my high school. We were on split sessions; 11 and 12 grade in the morning and 10 in the afternoon. After I graduated, a new HS was built and they probably stopped split sessions.
I can’t give a reason why the name changed, but in my hometown’s case it occurred in 1985 when we switched from a 7-8 Junior High School to a 6-7-8 Middle School.
And as an aside, my favorite statement on Junior High/Middle school, paraphrased from Matt Groening:
“The purpose of Junior High is to isolate kids during our peak ‘snotty years’, thereby preventing us from tormenting the younger kids in elementary school, and preventing the high schoolers from giving us the beatings we so richly deserve.”
My district did
K-5 elementary
6-8 middle school
9 9th grade center
10-12 high school
It was a space issue in a rapidly growing district. By the time I reached 6th grade the one high school had become two, which both included 9th graders, and the 9th grade center had become a second middle school.
Here is one main reason, as well as a link to a book that explains the changes started to happen in the 1960’s
Yeah, they do that around here, too. Quite aside from discipline issues, it also means that the kids need to spend less time going from class to class, and the teachers of the same students can coordinate better. And if a student needs to grab something from the locker during class, it’s probably right outside the door. Of course, you still have some classes that are in the same location for everyone, like the gym and the computer lab, but the big four (English, math, science, social studies) are all together.
No more than Junior year implies male. Or Freshman. Or Senior.
My small town (pop. 1800) originally had an elementary school (k-8) and high school (9-12). Baby boomers created the need for an additional building for 5-8. It was built in 1970 and called “middle school.” I’m guessing people felt grades 5 & 6 were a little to young to be called junior high.
You know, that lines up perfectly with my experience that girls turn evil between the ages of 12 and 14.
I’m old school, so it was k-6, junior high at 7-8, and high at 9-12. It was all in the same building (the built a new wing for elementary school when I was in fifth grade).
I was under the impression that it was just educators rearranging the deck chairs. They were always coming up with new educational fads that they drop before they could really determine if they has any positive effect, usually because the philosophy never took into account the fact that individual students have different leaning styles.