Although school violence is an important topic to the U.S. public, little research has examined issues of violence and bad behavior in schools, particularly among early adolescents. To fill this need, research on the transition from elementary to middle grades, to include the domain of violence, is covered in this paper. Three aspects of violence are defined: victimization at school, getting into trouble for bad behavior at school, and perceptions of school as having serious problems. Special emphasis was placed on studying predictors of violence during early adolescence. Drawing on data from a national educational longitudinal study, it was found that students reported being victimized and perceived their school as having serious problems more often in school when the transitions from elementary to the current eighth-grade school occurred during early adolescence. Students who made the transition into their current eighth-grade school during grades 3, 4, or 5 were less likely to report being victimized and were less likely to report perceiving their schools as dangerous or as having problems when compared to other students. It is thought that schools with certain grade structures tend to engage in practices that are incompatible with the developmental needs of early adolescents. Contains approximately 70 references. (RJM)