This issue reviews grade span, or grade configuration. Catherine Paglin and Jennifer Fager's "Grade Configuration: Who Goes Where?" provides an overview of issues and concerns related to grade spans and supplies profiles of eight Northwest schools with varying grade spans. David F. Wihry, Theodore Coladarci, and Curtis Meadow's…

Given that the physical, emotional, and social metamorphosis of today's early adolescents differs chronologically from that of adolescents a century ago, school districts must identify the middle level school grade configuration that will best accommodate local student developmental needs. Educators must first identify the age at which local…

This supplement/newsletter contains booktalks, news, and other information of interest to librarians, teachers, and readers. This issue includes plans for future issues of the newsletter as well as reviews of fiction and nonfiction books for elementary and secondary school students. Appropriate grade levels, popularity level, and quality level are…

Designed as an overview of the progress of middle schools in the last two decades, this document compares results from a 1968 survey that sampled 10 percent of middle schools with at least three, and not more than five grades, and including grades 6 and 7, with those of a similar 1988 survey. Following a brief summary of the origins of the middle…

In recent years, there has been a rapid growth of interest in Sweden in vertically integrated classes in compulsory schools, especially at junior high school and intermediate grade levels. This development is supported in various ways by the curriculum, partly because it puts more emphasis than previous curricula on the occurrence of teaching…

Multiage education is the placement of children of varying ages, grades, and ability levels in the same classroom with the aim of improving learning for all of them. Teaching a multiage class requires very different knowledge and skills than teaching traditional single-grade classes. Interest in multiage education has grown in recent years, and…

Multiage grouping is one way schools can organize around students and their learning. In multiage grouping, students of different chronological ages are intentionally assigned to the same classroom. Multiage grouping may also be called "mixed age." Other terms, such as "nongraded,""ungraded,""multigrade," or "split-grade," are often used…

This report presents the results of the School Utilization Study (SUS) sponsored by the Center for Statistics and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1982-83, which surveyed a sample of 2,700 teachers from schools across the nation to obtain information both on ways in which computers are being used by teachers in public and private…

Nongraded education is the practice of teaching children of different ages and ability levels together in the same classroom, without dividing them or the curriculum into steps labeled by "grade" designations. Children progress along the continuum from easier to more difficult material at their own, varying rates of speed. Interest in nongraded…