Reconfiguration -- is it really worth millions of dollars to Beloit taxpayers?

The school district keeps telling Beloit parents and teachers that the proposed multimillion dollar reconfiguration plan will be the best educational environment for our children. In addition to our own research, we have reviewed the research sent out by the school district and provided on the district website. The conclusions are all consistent -- grade configuration has not been proven to increase  student achievement. There is no one configuration proven to work better than others. The following excerpts and links were provided by the school district:

http://educationnorthwest.org/webfm_send/464

"Schools with many grade levels will have more opportunities for cross-age activities such as older students helping out in younger students’ classrooms and participating in tutoring activities. Schools with big grade spans may be able to sustain more parent involvement in the upper grades than is typical in middle or high schools. On the other hand, because schools with very wide grade spans usually have fewer students and classrooms per grade, there may be fewer opportunities for elective or exploratory courses. In addition, fewer classrooms per grade means fewer opportunities to match students to teachers according to learning and teaching styles, to place students with others with whom they work well, or to separate students who don’t get along. Opportunities for teacher collaboration or mentoring at a specific grade level are also reduced.

One-and two-grade schools present the challenge of how to preserve a sense of continuity and stability when all or half of the student population turns over every year. On the other hand they may offer the opportunity for a special focus on problems particular to that grade level, such as the high dropout rate of ninth-graders (Viadero, 1993).

No particular sequence of grade spans is perfect or in itself guarantees student achievement and social adjustment."

http://educationnorthwest.org/print/1694

"Almost 10 years ago, NWREL looked at the available research on grade configuration and concluded that little evidence existed to determine a cause-and-effect relationship between grade configuration and academic achievement. The few studies that did exist offered few clear policy guidelines. For example, one controlled study showed that sixth-graders did better in a K–8 setting rather than a middle school setting, but it didn’t demonstrate how the configuration affects other students of different grade levels (Paglin & Fager, 1997). Many studies also did not control for school size, socioeconomic factors, and other variables, so results could be attributed to reasons other than grade configurations."

Maybe we could have formed an advisory committee to study the issue a little further.  Could we have done better than proposing a "solution" that clearly is not a solution to the challenges of middle school education? We think so.