K-8 schools are gaining popularity across Tampa Bay. Are they worth it?

Tampa Bay school districts are in a K-8 school resurgence.

Common through the 1940s, with a mini-boom in the early 2000s, the idea of letting children attend the same school from kindergarten through eighth grade is gaining renewed popularity among families.

The Pinellas County school district, for example, had a waiting list this spring of nearly 2,000 children for spaces in its two K-8 magnet schools. It plans to merge two neighboring mid-county elementary schools into a K-8 campus next year.

Parents in communities across Hillsborough County, such as Carrollwood and Apollo Beach, have petitioned their school board to convert local elementary schools into K-8 campuses so their children could avoid what some see as unsafe, unsuccessful middle schools. In August, the district opened its 14th combined elementary-middle school.

The Pasco County school district, which had no K-8 schools a decade ago, has made the model a go-to choice, too.

It’s built two in recent years — with a third under construction and another being planned as a consolidation of three New Port Richey schools where enrollment has declined. The Pasco school board on Tuesday approved that merger to take place next August.

Support for the concept is not universal, though.

While some parents say they like the idea of having education and community continuity for their children through the difficult adolescent years, others worry about having four- and five-year-olds share bus rides and hallways with preteens twice their size. While some educators point to the opportunity to keep children’s attention on core areas such as literacy for longer, others note that K-8 schools might offer fewer electives than focused middle schools for older students.

“It’s hard to prove that one model is better than the other,” said Michael Petrilli, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and one of the speakers at Harvard’s symposium on emerging school models. “There’s going to be tradeoffs.”

Academic benefits

Martin West, academic dean of Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, said his study of Florida students’ state exam results, published in 2013, found that K-8 schools offered positive benefits over the middle school model.

The outcomes showed that students who attended K-8 schools made more progress than their peers who switched schools at sixth grade. Follow-up research indicated that students who attended middle schools did not catch up in high school.

“In fact, they were a bit more likely to drop out of high school without graduating,” West said.

Those results were similar to those from New York City schools, said Columbia University researcher Jonah Rockoff.

“In general, what we find is very clear evidence that student achievement falls the year after students make one of those transitions ... and it doesn’t bounce back by the end of eighth grade,” Rockoff said.

His 2010 paper on the subject also stated that students who start further behind “fare especially poorly in middle school.”

A more recent study from Ohio, published in 2018, did not support the K-8 model as much as the earlier articles. While a K-8 might alleviate some of the problems associated with middle schools, there was no evidence of a cumulative negative effect from attending separate elementary and middle schools, wrote authors Kai Hong of New York University, Ron Zimmer of the University of Kentucky and John Engberg of the RAND Corp.

“Many educators believe that a K-8 environment can address some of these issues for middle school students by eliminating the transition between elementary and middle schools,” they wrote. “However, this argument does not consider the possible consequences for elementary students in a K-8 environment.”

West and Rockoff both were quick to acknowledge that while test results suggested the benefits of a K-8 school, they did not prove one model inherently is better.

“We’re not aiming to say there’s one optimal grade configuration,” West said. “We’re saying, on average K-8 schools seem to have some advantages.”

Meeting student needs

Much depends on the strength of the program that educators offer at each school — including how they handle grade-level transitions and curriculum alignment, Rockoff said.

“Schools that get it right are those that understand the distinct needs of kids in that 10 to 15 age group,” said Phyllis Fagell, a longtime educator and author of “Middle School Matters.”

K-8 schools might provide a more nurturing environment for adolescents, who often struggle with academic demands as they also experience social insecurities and physical changes, Fagell said. But they’re not the only solution.

“I think you can get it right in any setup with the right adults and the right structure,” she said.

Stephanie Simpson, chief executive of the Association for Middle Level Education, agreed that the key is how the education program is designed. There is no definitive research that shows any specific model works best for everyone, Simpson stressed.

That’s where families and communities come in, said Petrilli, a strong supporter of school choice. After all, many school districts are looking to the K-8 model because parents are bolting from middle schools, which they see as negative.

“If what we see is schools trying to respond to the signals they see in the marketplace, that’s a good thing,” he said.

Resistance fades

Pasco County assistant superintendent Tom Barker ran his district’s first foray into K-8 education a decade ago when Crews Lake Middle and Shady Hills Elementary merged temporarily during a construction project. The initial feedback was negative, he recalled, with some residents protesting outside the building.

The school asked for their input as it made decisions about everything from where each grade level took classes to how they rode the buses. Parents who feared mixing kindergartners with eighth graders soon saw the leadership skills the older children gained while helping the youngest ones in reading, Barker said.

“We were very surprised to see how middle school kids shifted their behavior because their brothers and sisters were on campus,” he said. “They were sweet.”

He also pointed to the added opportunities elementary grade students had to get accelerated core courses because the higher grade teachers were on campus.

By the time the test run ended, parents who initially resisted asked to keep the K-8 model. It didn’t happen then, but the message continues to resonate, he said.