Book Description

ABSTRACT: Before investing a large amount of human and financial resources in grade configuration redesign, urban school administrators need to understand whether it is the large structural changes, like grade configuration redesign, or whether it is the practices implemented within those larger structures that make the biggest impact on student achievement. In this study, 32 K-8 configured schools in the southeast United States are paired with 32 6-8 configured schools with comparable SES and minority rates within the same urban school district. This research uses the results from 192 educator surveys to determine the implementation level of established model practices, including interdisciplinary teaming, common teacher planning, heterogeneous grouping, advisory periods, exploratory courses, and looping. In addition, the reading and math achievement gain scores from the Florida Comprehensive Test of 12,727 sixth grade students are used to determine if there is a relationship between any of the practices, the grade level configuration of the school and student achievement in an urban setting. There were differences in student achievement by grade configuration, with the students in K-8 schools making significantly greater gains in both reading and math; however, that increase may well be due to other factors such as grade level size or socioeconomic differences rather than the configuration of the school. Of the model practices examined, interdisciplinary teaming was the only model practice that had a significant difference in level of implementation, which was higher in the K-8 configured schools. When achievement gains were compared to the level of implementation of each of the six model practices, no significant relationships were found. Finally, there was no difference in combined effects of grade configuration and implementation of model level practices with gains in student achievement in reading or mathematics.