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John,

Of those districts moving away. most (if not the large majority of them) are urban districts like Cincinnatti, Baltimore, Philly, and NYC all of whom don;t compare demographically or socio-economically to us. Research on the efficacy of K-8 is thin because in most cases K-8 schools tend to be very small and don;t make a good statistical sample. Further, there's reasearch that shows that kids coming out of the K-8 model struggle in the much larger high school setting and there are performance drops that are similar to drops found in some studies of moving from K-6 to middle school. Thebottom line is that there is no general consensus on what the best grade make up is for these 'tweener' years. It's more important what's being taught and how it's being taught that matters and, over the years, I don;t think there's been good leadership administratively and via the school committee to hold people accountable to high standards. Look at the demographic info from the Winman/Tollgate feeder district and compare it to EG. They're very similar and yet EG vastly outperforms that feeder district so I wouldn't put as much weight on parental intelligence level as i think you would. Lastly, if we move to middle school and do it right, except for todsay junior high's we don;t have buildings at 50% capacity. But my point is we casn take the junior highs and put the 6th graders in and the capacities go to 80% or so for a long time. Because this opens up a lot of room in the elementaries and you could easily close one, maybe more but all day K would have to be considered too. High schools can be addressed separately from elem/middle school. it can be done but it would be hard work.

davebarry, check your last tax bill, the schools/city split is 55/45. Ten years ago it was 60/40. Schools are the lions share of every community's tax bill.

From: Skeptics question plan to close Gorton

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