School Zone / Zip Code School Restrictions In Areas

Introduction

The United States Postal Service made history when it developed the concept of the zip code to help deal with the complexities of accurately delivering the mail. Virtually every American now knows that a zip code indicates a general area within which are often as many as several hundred individual addresses, each one signifying a unique home designed, ideally, to meet the special needs of the group that lives within. Having the mail go astray as a consequence of having been sent to the wrong zip code can be frustrating. Probably every reader has memorized his or her zip code, including the newer nine-digit one. Not nearly so many Americans know that there are “educational zip codes” every bit as important.

Discussion

We believe that American education has evolved, in the last half-century, to the point where the developmental characteristics and needs of students at the three levels have produced three distinct educational zip codes, each with common characteristics that distinguish it from the other two. There are now three such widely acknowledged zip codes: elementary, middle, and high school. As with one's knowledge of one's own personal postal zip codes, most professionals know the characteristics of their own educational zip codes, and at least the characteristics of an adjoining zip code. (Walberg, 63)

The components of the zip code described in these documents and practices can be characterized by two important terms: unique and transitional. All feature of the middle school concept is specially tailored to the needs of the students at the middle level, not merely a thoughtless and unplanned downward extension of the high school program or an upward thrust of the elementary school. Yet, each component links the elementary and the high school together so that the process of ...