FCPS considers moving grade 6 to elementary school
Fairfax County School Board member Ricardy Anderson (Mason) invites the community to meetings to discuss whether Glasgow, Holmes, and Poe middle schools should continue to serve grades 6, 7, and 8 or whether 6th-graders should be served in elementary schools.
The virtual meetings are scheduled as follows:
• Thursday, March 10, 6-7. Register here.
• Thursday, March 10, 7:30-8:30 p.m. (Spanish only). Register here.
• Monday, March 14, 6-7 p.m.: Register here.
• Monday, March 14, 7:30-8:30 p.m. Register here.
Glasgow in Bailey’s Crossroads, Holmes in Lincolnia, and Poe in Annandale are the only middle schools in Fairfax County with the 6-8 grade configuration. All the others have just 7th and 8th graders.
FCPS piloted the grade-level change for the three middle schools in Mason District during the 1990-91 school year. Anderson notes in an email to the community. The school board approved the grades 6-8 model for all middle schools in 1991 but that change was never implemented.
In February, the school board approved two motions by Anderson to look into the discrepancy.
One motion directs the superintendent “to conduct a program audit of middle schools with grade 6 to determine if the current grade level configuration offers the most efficient use of facilities and/or meets instructional best practices.”
The other motion directs the superintendent “to engage the Mason District community to obtain parental perspective on the placement of grade 6 in middle school.” In addition to the upcoming meetings, there will be a survey and focus groups.
The FCPS analysis, prepared in response to the first motion, says, “Staff does not recommend making a change to the three FCPS middle schools that currently house grade 6 students for the purpose of teaching and learning.”
According to the report, “A review of recent research did not identify consensus on an ideal middle-school grade-level configuration in terms of student achievement or wellness outcomes. Rather, there are both advantages and disadvantages to placement of grade 6 in middle school.”
“Research indicates that a high-quality educational experience has a greater impact than any specific grade level configuration,” the report states.
It found Parklawn Elementary School would be over capacity by a “moderate to substantial” amount if grade 6 were added, possibly requiring a trailer to handle the additional students.
Taking 6th-graders out of the three middle schools could result in staff cuts. In another impact, new bus routes would be needed, which would be problematic as there’s a shortage of bus drivers.
Most U.S. middle schools have grades 6-8, including those in Alexandria City, Arlington County, Falls Church City, Loudoun County, and Montgomery County, Md.
13 responses to “FCPS considers moving grade 6 to elementary school”
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When I was in school back in the Stone Age, elementary was 1-6, and maybe kindergarten; junior high (now called middle school) was 7-9, high school was 10-12. I’d say configure it however the capacity works out. What are the benefits of changing the configuration? Seems like a school with only two grades wouldn’t be very efficient, plus you’ve got the bus situation, though it shouldn’t change much—you’d just have more kids on the elementary school buses and fewer on the middle school buses. Or are they at capacity now? Also, what technology would each school need to have depending on where 6th graders go? What is the reasoning for change? Just seems like change for change’s sake to me, but then I don’t have all the details.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out a good reason to do this.
The staff are against it. There is no educational benefit to it. And we will be moving kids from schools that are at or under capacity to schools that are at or over capacity.
The only reason I’ve seen stated is to make us be like the rest of the county. That is an absolutely stupid reason to go about this when there is no capacity to entertain this at the elementary level.
When I was in school in the Iron Age, elementary was K-6, 7th was a separate school, then 8-9 was Junior High and 10-12 was High School. I guess that is what our district had to do to fit all the kids in a building!
Why is FCPS needing to “experiment”???? The top FCPS pyramid (Langley) already does this, so it is hard to argue it would not be better from an academic standpoint. I think the only real concern would be capacity in the Elementary Schools. Maybe take of the middle schools and revert it to an elementary school to relieve the capacity concern?
I don’t think the grade alignment has anything to do with Langley’s pyramids success. I think Langley’s pyramids success has everything to do in that it is swarming in money, so parents can (and do) spend gobs of $ to supplement their kids education with outside tutors, etc as needed.
Also, all of the surrounding jurisdictions, including Arlington and Loudoun, use the model employed by Mason District, and those schools are also excellent.
So please, let’s not mistakenly make this about trying to make our pyramids more like Langley.
When I went to Poe it was just 7-8. Elementary included 6 and AHS started at 9.
If you still send your kids to public schools, you have bigger problems to worry about.
If you’ve got nothing better to do than be a message board troll, you have bigger problems to worry about.
I agree with Ronald… you all seem to be deep “in the weeds” when the state of public education has never been more concerning!
I went to howard county public schools in Maryland. It had Mason’s alignment. (K-5, 6-8, 9-12).
I’m not opposed to the idea of other alignments, but as previously posted, we cannot handle it at the elementary level.
When I went to school in the Bronze age elementary was 1-5, middle was 6-8, we went to the 9th grade “center” then high was 10-12. #waytogoalexandria
Where does the county get the elementary school space to do this? The idea rollout at in the early 90’s was to move all schools to this model of 6-8 for middle schools. They never followed through after the mason districts schools did it. Now the area with the least land available to renovate and expand schools is being asked to ponder moving 6th back to elementary school.
If the county does this, it will cost a huge amount of money and do little for performance of the students.
I personally grew up where Elementary was K-4, Middle was 5-8 and High was 9-12. Reality is it doesn’t make much a difference moving 1 grade as long as that is what your school buildings were built to accommodate.
This discussion by the board is as big a waste of time and money as getting architectural plan for an expansion of Justice HS with the assumption that they owned a park that was County park land.
Our oldest went through 5th grade in elementary school. She was super ready to leave the setting of elementary education and move on to a different setup and expectations of middle school in 6th grade. The move to have 6th grade in elementary school level could result in kids who are bored and feel too old to be in elementary school, this possible behavioral issues…