Today’s Wall Street Journal reports on a new Education Next study showing that, at least in New York City, attending a standalone middle school rather than a K-8 school has a big negative impact on student achievement and attendance rates.  Recently I had the chance to interview the study’s lead author, Columbia Business School professor Jonah Rockoff.  Here are a few things I took away from our conversation:

1.  Can we believe the results?  It’s a fair question, as there is no lack of lousy research on middle schools.  As it turns out, though, New York is an ideal laboratory in which to study this question – and Rockoff and co-author Benjamin Lockwood know how to take full advantage. First, the grade configurations of the city’s public schools vary widely: some students move to middle schools in grade 6, some do so in grade 7, while still others attend the same school from kindergarten through grade 8.  Second, the district’s vaunted data system makes it possible to track the achievement of individual students over time as they move from one type of school to the next (or remain in a K-8 school).  Doing so reveals that students experience a drop in achievement (relative to other students remaining in K-8 schools) in the very same year they move into a middle school: in the 6^th grade for students making the K-5 to 6-8 transition, and in the 7^th grade for students moving from K-6 to 7-8 schools.

more… http://educationnext.org/how-middle-schools-hurt-student-achievement/