The Effects of School Grade Span Configuration on Student Achievement in Middle School-Aged Children

The purpose of the present study was to determine if transitioning from elementary to middle school has an effect on value added scores of sixth graders as compared to scores of students in K-8 schools with no transition. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze achievement data from students in 442 Tennessee public schools for the 2012-2013 school year. There were 203 schools with transition and 239 with no transition. A small statistically significant result was found for the transition by percent minority interaction effect (p = 0.002). There was a statistically significant result found for the percent minority by transition interaction effect on both mathematics and reading, with those schools with a high percentage of minority that did not transition scoring higher than all other combinations for both subjects. These results suggest that students in schools with high percentages of minorities perform better when there is no transition than their transitioning counterparts.