The history of young adolescent education can be viewed as an ongoing search for the appropriate combination of school organization, curriculum, and instructional practices for young adolescents. While middle schools have now become the most common pattern for schools housing young adolescents, there have always been other broader school configurations, such as K-12 and 7-12, serving these young people. Recently, attention has turned to another broad school configuration, the K-8 school. This renewed interest on the part of some school districts in this historically popular grade organization prompted the authors to conduct the study reported in this article. This study made it possible to compare the implementation of programs and practices normally found in middle schools with the implementation of those programs and practices in K-8 schools. The status data on middle school programs and practices, except when other sources are identified, are derived from the study of 746 public middle schools with grade configurations of 5-8, 6-8, or 7-8. The current study was not designed to prove one school configuration as better than another but rather to collect and analyze objective information about how young adolescents experience school in elementary schools and separate middle schools. However, the two school configurations explored--one designed for young children and the other for young adolescents--differ in many ways that inevitably affect the schooling experienced by the students that attend them. It would be shortsighted, at best, to believe that the grade configuration of a school does not affect programs and practices. One might say that grade configuration per se may not make "the difference," but it does make "a difference." Results from this study support that conclusion.