Pennsylvania's two largest school districts are weighing the same question: Can closing schools address declining enrollment and balance the budget?
Both the School District of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh Public Schools face aging school buildings and a myriad of school structures and sizes. But while the districts have a similar task at hand, their approach in addressing these problems differs in one major way — and it has to do with middle school.
Philadelphia currently has 13 different grade-bands configurations, with some schools serving students in grades K-4, K-5, 5-8, 5-12 and everything in between. Superintendent Tony Watlington told board members in June that the district wants to reduce those options to just six grade bands and close all standalone middle schools.
The new configuration will instead emphasize schools that offer some combination of the elementary, middle and high school models, which Watlington said is supported by district data.
"This plan will reduce the number of standalone middle schools because our very detailed research and study of the data over a number of years in Philadelphia, as well as outside of Philadelphia, indicates that students perform better with fewer transitions as they matriculate through their education," he told board members.
Pittsburgh school leaders, meanwhile, have proposed a different approach to consolidating their varied grade bands. In April 2024, PPS assistant superintendent Nina Sacco shared the district's intention to transition its buildings "back to educational environments dedicated exclusively to either K-5, 6-8, or 9-12 schools."
Sacco said these dedicated spaces will allow educators to "nurture" the unique academic, social, and emotional needs students have at each stage.
Both closure plans have drawn mixed reactions. Some parents in Pittsburgh say they look forward to more dedicated spaces for middle schoolers, while others say they prefer the community feel a K-8 school creates.
Which structure supports students best?
Philadelphia, with its 250 school buildings, is roughly five times the size of Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh closure plan would shrink the district from 54 to 39 school buildings, and disband the 11 K-8 schools currently in use.
While district officials in Philadelphia have yet to announce their school-level plans, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that about a third of the city's school buildings use less than half of their capacity. A little less than half of Pittsburgh schools, comparatively, were similarly underused, according to estimates using 2021 capacity figures.
District officials in both cities say it is more difficult to offer rigorous and expanded courses in under-enrolled schools. In Pittsburgh, only 13 of the 23 schools serving students in sixth, seventh and eighth grades offered Algebra 1, according to consultants' analysis last year. Just four of those schools provided lessons in world languages.
Should Philadelphia and Pittsburgh relocate middle-grade students to expanded elementary schools or standalone middle schools?
Mary Beth Schaefer, an associate professor of adolescent education at St. John's University in New York, said that while K-8 schools can be successful environments for middle-grade students, she generally prefers the standalone 6-8 model.
What's most important, Schaefer said, is that district leaders carefully implement the key components of a good middle school program: teams of teachers working collaboratively, course offerings that allow students to explore their interests, and "advisory" programs that give students a place to share their emotions.
"And from my experience, it's easier to implement the middle school concept in a standalone building, where everyone is steeped in the same culture of the middle grades child and those unique middle grades needs," Schaefer explained.
She said that doesn't mean that it cannot happen in a K-8 school. But doing so, she emphasized, requires districts to be intentional about how they make their upper-grade programs distinct from the lower ones.
The same goes for models that put early adolescents in the same building as older teens, such as a 6-12 school. It's a model employed by more than half of Pittsburgh's high schools, but Schaefer said those environments tend to be more subject-focused.
She said while that approach may work for high schoolers, middle schoolers need a more child-centered manner.
"As the population gets squeezed or gets smaller, the temptation is to say to a 12th grade English teacher who only taught AP classes, 'Hey, we need you to go teach seventh grade,'" she said.
That's not to say high school teachers can't teach middle schoolers, Schaefer added. But she and other experts stressed that, developmentally, these students have different needs. Early adolescence is a time of rapid physical, emotional and cognitive growth.
"The magic isn't in the grade configuration or the name you put on a building," said Katie Powell with the Association for Middle Level Education.
"The magic is in really understanding developmental needs and ensuring that your programs, practices and decision-making reflect those needs. That's where we'll see positive movement in all metrics for our students."
Powell said a successful middle school program starts with good professional development to ensure that all educators have a developmentally appropriate understanding of their students. That will inform how they teach, navigate classroom management and more, Powell said.
Pittsburgh plans to develop the three new teacher professional development centers as part of its reconfiguration plan. District officials say the goal is to consolidate resources and students so that buildings are better staffed, responsibilities are less fragmented and educators have more time to participate in professional learning.
What about the transition data Philly cited?
In his June presentation, Watlington noted that there have been signs that students do better when they experience fewer school-to-school transitions. A study conducted in Philadelphia during the 1990s found that students who stayed in K-8 schools performed better on standardized tests than students in district middle schools
But critics of that study pointed out that the benefit was primarily felt in more established K-8 schools serving more affluent students. Researchers at Johns Hopkins noted in 2007 that students at newer K-8 schools, despite having similar grade sizes and transition rates, didn't experience the same advantages.
Nearly 20 years later, grade structures are still up for debate. A study published in 2019 out of Virginia found middle-grade students do better on state exams when they attend a K-8 school. But other recent studies say there isn't enough conclusive evidence to say that grade structure is key to effective middle school practices.
To retired middle school principal Bruce Vosburgh, whether a transition from elementary to middle school results in positive or negative outcomes depends on whether school leaders manage that transition well.
Vosburgh, who served as principal of a Chester County middle school for 20 years, said it's incumbent upon schools to support parents through that transition, too.
"When I would meet with my parents early on, I'd say, 'You know, your kids will adjust to this middle school [in] maybe one or two weeks. It might take you two or three months before you adjust to the middle school,'" Vosburgh said.
It's something he looks for as director of Pennsylvania's Schools to Watch program, which recognizes middle schools showing significant growth and achievement.
Vosburgh said, when reviewing a middle school, he also examines how it fits into a district as a whole.
"You want the curriculum to flow from grade level, to grade level, to grade level. You want to make sure that your fifth-grade teachers are communicating with your sixth-grade teachers and your eighth grade is communicating with ninth grade," he said.
Just how school leaders in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh go about that amid significant changes to their footprints will depend on a lot of factors. Both districts have said they are weighing enrollment trends, access to transportation and school building capacity as they decide which schools close and which become a new home for early adolescents.
Powell said a single study on grade structures shouldn't dictate what approach each district takes.
"I think instead they're carefully weighing all of those sources of data and the various factors that matter in this decision-making process," she said. "And ensuring that whatever great configuration they land on, they're then making developmentally responsive decisions."
Powell said districts then need to give their schools the agency to make decisions based on the needs of their students, rather than what is easiest and convenient for adults.
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