Effects of School Setting on Fifth-Grade Student Outcomes

Abstract

Over four academic years, Metro Nashville Public Schools systemically moved over 6,000 fifth-grade students from the middle school setting to the elementary school setting. This study evaluates the first year of the transition to understand the impact of an additional year of elementary school on student literacy and numeracy performance, social and emotional competencies, and enrollment trends. The first group of students to transition did not represent the overall demographics of the school district. They were disproportionately students of color, came from low-income backgrounds, and had lower levels of prior academic performance. This program evaluation employed a mixed methods approach to understand staff perspectives and to compare outcomes of students who remained in elementary schools for fifth grade to those who transitioned to a middle school. We interviewed teachers and administrators and conducted regression analysis and propensity score matching to determine the impact of this transition. Students in the first cohort of the transition outperformed their peers in literacy and math. Our qualitative analyses confirmed that school teachers and administrators are overwhelmingly positive about the social and emotional benefits of the elementary setting and the developmental support that an additional year in elementary school provides. Those findings are replicated, in part, in the quantitative data. Finally, students allowed to remain in elementary school for one additional year were less likely to transfer between their fourth- and fifth-grade years.