Is the Answer to Close Middle Schools?

I just really wonder if the entire concept of the creation of Middle Schools
much like New Math or other "advances" in education or child development that
has done more harm than good and allowed situational problems to be
misidentified over time as people problems.

I also wonder if it is a part of the reason why parochial / religious K-8
schools seem to have better test scores with similar populations of kids in
certain communities -- even when class sizes are higher but number of students
in the overall program/number of unique students a teacher has all day is lower
than average. A teacher is in part a case manager for a students education --
throw more unique students on a teacher, more cases to manage and more
relationships to manage.

What I find funny as a child of the Catholic school system -- is that parents
were even less involved when they paid cash out of pocket because they had an
even further "market" based relationship with the school provider/teachers but
also then had a results based point of view.

On a personal level, I feel more and more certain that the number one thing we
should do to rescue education in the US is to close middle schools down and
create smaller Jr. Highs that are a part of the elementary schools but "schools
within a school" concept. It would mean transitioning one Middle School into an
Elementary and further dividing down the elementary population to free up
classrooms. It would mean that to create sports teams to compete at Middle
School level it would require "all district team" in the case of Albany.

If middle school is where parents are pushed out but simultaneously where
serious problems begin (performance gaps become permanent, kids who drop out in
HS tuned out in MS) -- keep the continuity of care from Elementary until High
School where kids are supposed to be more developmentally mature. I realize
there is a "we can't protect kids forever" and "social developmental skills
building is very different for middle school aged kids" type logic tossed around
-- however are those good enough reasons to not look seriously at this.

It is VERY clear to me that the transition from Elementary to Middle School is
very harsh & abrupt and that it creates too many situational problems/gaps that
then look like people problems. On a personal note, I think most Middle School
teachers are less friendly, less open more overwhelmed, less team oriented with
each other and with parents and a LOT less happy/satisfied than the Elementary
teachers I've dealt with.

Middle School has different rules, culture and bullying problems, mixing kids
together from multiple separate sites, lack of resources for supervision, lack
of resources for counseling, lack of communication/continuity of
issues/disconnection between elementary teachers and middle school to talk/share
individual student strategies, lack of communication/continuity between service
providers like special education, etc.

Anyone have the data on districts that have done this vs. setting up K-8
charter? Which is another alternative.