The negative impacts of starting middle school in sixth grade

Cook, Philip J.; MacCoun, Robert J.; Muschkin, Clara G.; Vigdor, Jacob L.

doi:10.1002/pam.20309

Cited by 62 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…This lends further support to the idea that middle school attendance may be worse for students who enter at younger ages. Cook et al (2008) come to a similar conclusion, and hypothesize that younger students may be more sensitive to negative influences of older students.…”

Section: Checks On Robustness and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…2 The impact of grade configuration has received little attention by economists relative to issues such as class size or teacher quality. There are a few studies which provide evidence that the transition to middle school is associated with a loss of academic achievement, elevated suspension rates, and reduced self esteem (Alspaugh (1998a(Alspaugh ( , 1998b, Weiss and Kipnes, (2006), Byrnes and Ruby (2007), Cook et al (2008)). There is also a large body of work by educational researchers and developmental psychologists documenting changes in attitudes and motivation as children enter adolescence (Eccles et al (1984)), and some have hypothesized that instructional differences in middle schools contribute to these changes.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…While there is little evidence that middle schools use fewer resources, we find that they differ in several 3 One exception is work by Bedard and Do (2005); using panel data on U.S. school districts, they find a small negative relationship between changes in the fraction of 6 th graders enrolled in middle schools and changes in high school completion rates seven years later. Additionally, using a pseudo-longitudinal analysis, Cook et al (2008) provide evidence that students moving to middle schools in their sample are not systematically different. structural ways (e.g., cohort sizes are considerably larger) and that they are perceived negatively on several dimensions by parents and students.…”

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Stuck in the middle: Impacts of grade configuration in public schools

Rockoff¹,

Lockwood²

2010

Journal of Public Economics

101

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We examine the implications of separating students of different grade levels across schools for the purposes of educational production. Specifically, we find that moving students from elementary to middle school in 6th or 7th grade causes significant drops in academic achievement. These effects are large (about 0.15 standard deviations), present for both math and English, and persist through grade 8, the last year for which we have achievement data. The effects are similar for boys and girls, but stronger for student s with low levels of initial achievement. We instrument for middle school attendance using the grade range of the school students attended in grade 3, and employ specifications that control for student fixed effects. This leaves only one potential source of bias-correlation between grade range of a student's grade 3 school and unobservable characteristics that cause decreases in achievement precisely when students are due to switch schools-which we view as highly unlikely. We find little evidence that placing public school students into middle schools during adolescence is cost-effective. AbstractWe examine the implications of separating students of different grade levels across schools for the purposes of educational production. Specifically, we find that moving students from elementary to middle school in 6 th or 7 th grade causes significant drops in academic achievement. These effects are large (about 0.15 standard deviations), present for both math and English, and persist through grade 8, the last year for which we have achievement data. The effects are similar for boys and girls, but stronger for students with low levels of initial achievement. We instrument for middle school attendance using the grade range of the school students attended in grade 3, and employ specifications that control for student fixed effects. This leaves only one potential source of bias-correlation between grade range of a student's grade 3 school and unobservable characteristics that cause decreases in achievement precisely when students are due to switch schools-which we view as highly unlikely. We find little evidence that placing public school students into middle schools during adolescence is cost-effective.

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Section: Checks On Robustness and Interpretationmentioning

confidence: 71%

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

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Stuck in the middle: Impacts of grade configuration in public schools

Rockoff¹,

Lockwood²

2010

Journal of Public Economics

101

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“…Developmental psychologists have documented a decline in achievement-related attitudes and beliefs among students transitioning to middle schools, which some have attributed to a mismatch between the motivational and developmental needs of early adolescents and aspects of the organizational environment in middle schools (Eccles and Midgley 1989). Studies using cross-sectional data have likewise shown that middle school transitions are associated with increased behavioral problems and declines in academic achievement (Allspaugh 1998, Byrnes and Ruby 2007, Cook et al 2008), but these findings could reflect unobserved differences between students attending schools with different grade configurations. Using panel data on American school districts, Bedard and Do (2005) show that increases in the share of 6 th graders enrolled in middle schools were associated with small decreases in graduation rates for the relevant cohorts.…”

Section: Background and Evidence On Grade Configuration In The Usmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of alternative grade configurations on student outcomes through middle and high school

Schwerdt

West²

2013

Journal of Public Economics

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We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. Based on an instrumental variable estimation strategy, we find that students moving from elementary to middle school suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the transition year. These achievement drops persist through grade 10. We also find that middle school entry increases student absences and is associated with higher grade 10 dropout rates. Transitions to high school in grade nine cause a smaller one-time drop in achievement but do not alter students' performance trajectories. JEL Codes: H52, I21, I28Keywords: Educational production, public schools, grade configuration, middle schools, high schools * We are grateful to the Florida Department of Education for providing the primary dataset for this study, to David Figlio for sharing survey data used in a portion of the analysis, and to John Bishop, Brian Jacob, Paul Peterson, Jonah Rockoff, Ludger Woessmann, two anonymous referees, and seminar participants at Harvard University, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and CESifo for helpful comments. Any errors are our own. † Corresponding Author Grade Configuration and Student Outcomes 1 IntroductionAmong the most basic questions facing policymakers in any education system is how best to group students in different grades across schools. The choice of grade configuration at minimum determines the number of structural school transitions students make, the age at which they make these transitions, and the relative age of the peers to whom they are exposed at various ages. While all of these factors could plausibly influence student outcomes, the literature on differences in student achievement across countries (Hanushek and Woessmann 2011) has largely ignored the issue of grade configuration.In the U.S., a majority of students switch from elementary school to middle school in grade 6 or 7 before entering high school in grade 9. However, alternative paths through primary and secondary schooling were more common historically and remain available to students in many areas. Some students attend K-8 or even K-12 public schools, while others move after elementary school into schools covering both middle and high school grades. The extent of this variation makes the U.S. a valuable potential source of evidence on the role of grade configuration in education production.Recent findings from New York City (Rockoff and Lockwood 2010) indicate that entering a middle school causes a sharp drop in student achievement that persists through grade 8. However, it remains unclear whether this pattern is evident in other settings and whether the negative effect of middle school attendance persists into high school. The latter consideration is critical as a key rationale for the creation of middle schools was to ease students' transition to high school, and simply having experienced a prior school transition may make students more resilient ...

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“…One commonly cited potential mechanism for the middle school achievement dip is the top dog/bottom dog (TDBD) phenomenon (Blyth, Simmons, & Bush, 1978;Cook, MacCoun, Muschkin, & Vigdor, 2008;Weiss & Kipnes, 2006), which occurs when students at the top of a grade span distribution have better experiences than those at the bottom. That is, the oldest students in a school (''top dogs'') experience a more favorable school environment (including increased participation in leadership roles and decreased incidence of bullying and fights) than the youngest students in a school (''bottom dogs''), who face increased victimization, exposure to delinquent peer influences, and feelings of anonymity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Top Dogs Rule in Middle School? Evidence on Bullying, Safety, and Belonging

Schwartz

Stiefel

Rothbart

2016

American Educational Research Journal

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Recent research finds that grade span affects academic achievement but only speculates about the mechanisms. In this study, we examine one commonly cited mechanism, the top dog/bottom dog phenomenon, which states that students at the top of a grade span (“top dogs”) have better experiences than those at the bottom (“bottom dogs”). Using an instrumental variables strategy introduced in Rockoff and Lockwood (2010) and a longitudinal data set containing student survey data for New York City public middle school students, we estimate the impact of top dog and bottom dog status on bullying, safety, belonging, and academic achievement. This article provides the first credibly causal evidence that top dog status improves the learning environment and academic achievement. We further find that the top dog effect is strongest in sixth grade and in schools with longer grade spans and that the top dog effect is not explained by new students to a school or student height.

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The negative impacts of starting middle school in sixth grade

Abstract: Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, we

Cited by 62 publications

References 28 publications

Stuck in the middle: Impacts of grade configuration in public schools

Stuck in the middle: Impacts of grade configuration in public schools

The impact of alternative grade configurations on student outcomes through middle and high school

Do Top Dogs Rule in Middle School? Evidence on Bullying, Safety, and Belonging

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