TY  - JOUR
AU  - Cook,Philip J.
AU  - MacCoun,Robert
AU  - Muschkin,Clara
AU  - Vigdor,Jacob
TI  - Should Sixth Grade be in Elementary or Middle School? An Analysis of Grade Configuration and Student Behavior
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12471
PY  - 2006
Y2  - August 2006
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12471
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w12471.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Philip J. Cook
Schelling Visiting Professor of Public Policy
University of Maryland
4109 Van Munching Hall
College Park, MD 20742
Tel: 301/405-3494
Fax: 301/403-4675
E-Mail: pcook@duke.edu

Jacob L. Vigdor
Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy
Box 90312 Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/613-9226
Fax: 919/681-8288
E-Mail: jacob.vigdor@duke.edu
AB  - 
Using administrative data on public school students in North Carolina, we find that sixth grade students attending middle schools are much more likely to be cited for discipline problems than those attending elementary school.  That difference remains after adjusting for the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the students and their schools.  Furthermore, the higher infraction rates recorded by sixth graders who are placed in middle school persist at least through ninth grade.   A plausible explanation is that sixth graders are at an especially impressionable age; in middle school, the exposure to older peers and the relative freedom from supervision have deleterious consequences.
ER  -