Grade-Span Configuration.

Grade span . or grade configuration. j.,; the range of grade! that a school comprises. In Bangor, where the fir..1 author '~ children attended school. students begmthei r edu cation career at a k-J school. proceed 10 a 4-5 school. then a 6-8 school . and finally to the 9-12 high school. There are many alternatives to the Bangor profile. of COON:. Table I shows the config uratio ns. involving selec ted grades , for public schoo'" across the country . For exam ple, the 6th grade most oft en is found in a pIk-6 schoo l (4 1.49%), although the 6-8 conligurat ion is not uncommon (25.3 4Sf). Roughly half of 8th-grade schools are co nfig ured either 68 /35 .2311) or pIk·8 ( 19.12%). with a sizable number eve nly divided between 7-12 ( 11.67Cl) and 7-8 (1 1.66) configuranons . Finally , a 12th grade typically is situated in a 9-12 school (66.48%). with 712 (16.46%) and pIk·12 (7 .82%-) accounting for the remaining schools havin g a 12th grade. However configured, a school's grade span is an im portant issue to venous fact ions concerned with public ed ucalion . And these groups do not alway s take the same position on this issue. For example, many proponents of middle-level educatio n favo r the educational separa tion of young adolesce nts 10 best accomm odat e the ir deve lop mental needs and characteristics (c.g .. Jenkins & Mc Ewin, 19(2). According to such thou ght . a 5-8 or 6-g config uration is more desirable than . say. a k-8 config ura tion. Rural educators. in contrast. ofte n decry such grade fragmentation because of its association with school consolidation, \Choolclosures. and the threaten survival of rural communities te.g.. DeYou ng. Howley, Theobald. 1995) . Finally, budget-minded school board members and legislators rypi-