An Examination and Analysis of Middle School Transition Plans: A Study of Local Education Agencies and Middle Schools in North Carolina

This study explored if North Carolina school systems had a research based, targeted, formalized, written transitional plan for students traveling from elementary to middle school. All 115 LEAs were initially scanned to discover if such district wide transitional plan existed. Eighty-nine LEAs responded and three had such a plan. Once respondents were determined, 15 faculty were interviewed using a structured interview format: six from a school system in the Piedmont in North Carolina, five from a suburban community outside of a University, and four from a coastal school district. Three themes emerged from the data analysis: existence, elements, and communication. This research study found that there is a shortage of formal, purposeful implementation of transitional best practice research within North Carolina middle schools and LEAs. This study also explored how systems theory was carried out within LEAs and middle schools to accomplish the task of creating, implementing, and sustaining their plan. This research used systems theory in an attempt to examine the actual and perceived communication styles that each LEA and middle school used. The systems theory models of system-wide thinking, open-systems thinking, and process-systems thinking were not uniform within a LEA or middle school involved in this research.