Block
Scheduling: It May Be A Large Mountain That Your Child Will Have to Climb Argumentative Essay By Matt Scholl
As block scheduling is being implemented in more schools around the country,
parents are finding that they are becoming interested in a part of life
that they have long passed. Why?
They are hearing about the negative effects block scheduling can have
on their children’s education. Sure,
their children are benefiting through less time lost in the halls, and
more time for student-teacher interaction, but problems are arising with
attention span limits, retention, transferring, and academic performance.
The school day has been restructured from the typical
six to eight period day to a day that involves only four periods.
Classes in the block schedule are much longer than the traditional
40 to 50 minute period. Courses are taken for half a year instead of the whole year.
An optimist may say that block scheduling will lessen the stress
on students and provide teachers with the option to invent new teaching
styles and methods. That
is a positive outlook though.
It is true that
at first glance block scheduling looks like a good idea to most students.
I can vouch for this from my experience with block scheduling.
My friends and I immediately thought that block scheduling would
be much easier to handle than the normal eight period schedule that had
been used at our high school, Whitehall High School.
At the time we were unaware of the problems associated with the
new type of scheduling. The
only information we had provided to us was looking through a positive
perspective. However, after
one grading period of the block scheduling the problems were apparent
to most participants. Susan
Johnson, a member of the class graduating in 2001 from Whitehall High
School, provided an interesting story.
Johnson said, “the new type of schedule was talked about in such
a positive way when it first started that I actually made fun of my friends
that didn’t attend a school that had applied the schedule. By the end of one grading period of the new scheduling I found
myself complaining to the same friends that I had made fun of for not
having the schedule in their school."
Jeff Lindsay,
a concerned father of three and an author of his own website that includes
information and opinions about block scheduling, states that, “longer
classes are incompatible with the attention spans of most students.”
According to Lindsay, who has been recognized by Britannica.com
for having one of the best block scheduling sites on the web, the natural
tendency in block scheduling is to water down the material instead of
trying to cover more. Movies,
games, and homework are being used in classrooms to fill in the down time. In classes like math and science it is the hardest to water
down material and students often find these type of classes the most difficult
to pay attention in (Lindsay “Summary of Problems” 1). Peter Bugby, a German teacher at Whitehall High School,
says, “I have taught German in many different schools.
Since block scheduling has been implemented at Whitehall High School
I have covered less material than I ever did in the other schools I taught
in. The kids just can’t make
it through eighty minutes of German class.
The more advanced German classes are better but German one and
two have so many kids that lose interest.
When I feel the students are out of my grasp I will pop in a stupid
German video. I’m sure they
don’t pay attention to that but at least I’m not in front of the class
talking to myself.” Watered
down material and attention span limitations are likely to make learning
less effective.
On almost
all college applications there is a spot for SAT and ACT test scores.
Block scheduling brings up a significant problem when it comes
to student performance on the SAT and ACT test.
Lindsay points out that students taking courses like English, Math,
and Science in one semester can have a gap of eight to thirteen months
before they have the next course in the series.
He says, “The long gaps in learning a particular topic may translate
into poor retention and the need for more remedial review.” Students who take the SAT or ACT test at the end of the school
year may not do that well because of the amount of time that has passed
since they took a course in the first semester (Lindsay “Summary of Problems”
1). In an interview Cristina
Dauscher, a 2000 graduate of Whitehall High School, said, "I had
Algebra 2 in the first half of my sophomore year.
I took my SAT's in November of the next school year.
I had 9 months of time without any math class before I took my
SAT's. The math part
of the exam seemed like it was written in a different language. I just couldn’t remember anything because it had been so long
since I took math."
Imagine what
it would be like to transfer to a new school in the middle of the school
year. It is a tough task for any student to tackle.
Now imagine transferring from a block-scheduled school to a non-block
scheduled school or from a non-block scheduled school to a block scheduled
school. Lindsay says that
a student transferring from a school without block scheduling to one with
block scheduling may have missed up to a half a year of material that
is required. Students may
also “needlessly repeat” half of a year of material for courses already
taken (Lindsay “Summary of Problems” 1).
Block scheduling
has been proven to decrease grades.
For many years experts in favor of block scheduling denied that
any studies were being done in Canada.
The reason for this is because the Canadian studies were finding
that block scheduling did not improve test grades.
In fact, the studies showed a decline in test scores.
According to tests done in 1996 by British Columbia, tests for
the 12th grade showed a diminished performance in all subjects
for students in block scheduling. For example, the study found that 8.2%
of full-year students got A’s on an exam, while only 5.9% of the block
scheduled students got A’s on the same test.
According to
Lindsay, “the block scheduling bandwagon continues to roll, sometimes
in spite of the children playing in the road.” (Lindsay “The Debate…”
1). Many schools around the
country have implemented the non-traditional type of schedule.
On his website Lindsay includes one of the many comments that he
has received from parents and teachers: A
city administrator gave all secondary schools the directive to implement
the block in the fall of 1999. Now
all junior/senior high school counselors are reporting a real mess.
We have more schedule conflicts than ever before when we had traditional
seven period day. The science
teachers do like the longer periods, but we are discovering students are
not retaining the material. And
we have been told to cut 20% of the curriculum.
This is silly…why cut 20% if you have more time???
Someone is not looking at the total minutes. We are on an every-other-day block (8X2) and students are forgetting
their homework, and not retaining material when taking tests.
Grades in core classes are way down.
Each student has four core classes and four electives.
So even though they fail a core class, they can still get an A
in ‘basket weaving 101’ or ‘making balloon doggies 102’, and pass to the
next grade. Talk about an
inflated GPA. And our performing
arts teachers are really mad (Lindsay “The Debate…” 1). From my knowledge of educational
development I know that the United States is behind the development of
some other nations. Is
the non-traditional block scheduling the way to go in order to bring United
States education to the level of country’s that our ahead of them right
now? Block scheduling
has not been proven to increase test scores.
Studies done to evaluate a countries educational development involve
calculations of test scores. If
block scheduling is not proven to increase performance on test scores
than how can it help the United States climb to the top of the educational
ladder?
Works
Cited Lindsay,
Jeff. Pros and Cons, Alternatives.
1 October 2000. Online.
Available:
http://www.jefflindsay.com/Block1.shtml.
21 November 2000. Lindsay,
Jeff. The Debate on Academic
Harm. 1 October 2000.
Online. Available:
http://www.jefflindsay.com/Block2.shtml.
21 November 2000. Johnson,
Susan. Personal Interview. 19 November 2000. Dauscher,
Cristina. Personal Interview.
20 November 2000. Bugby,
Peter. Personal Interview.
19 November 2000.
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