EFFECTS OF SCHOOL RESTRUCTURING ON THE ACHIEVEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT OF MIDDLE-GRADE STUDENTS

This article reports on a study of the impact of attending restructured schools on the achievement and engagement of young adolescents. It places the movement toward restructuring in a conceptual framework favoring the development of more communally organized schools and away from the largely bureaucratic organization of most American schools. Using a subsample of 8,845 eighth graders in 377 public, Catholic, and independent middle-grade schools from the base year of the National Longitudinal Study of 1988, the authors examined the effects of school restructuring (less departmentalization, more heterogeneous grouping, more team teaching, and a composite restructuring index) on students' achievement, engagement with academic work, and at-risk behaviors. Modest but consistently positive effects of restructuring were found on both achievement and engagement, as well as with a more equitable social distribution of these outcomes. Students attending schools with fewer eighth-grade peers also demonstrated more academic engagement and a more equitable distribution of achievement.