Roger Schoenstein, a veteran teacher at Wasson High School in Colorado Springs, is quite familiar with the vagaries of the traditional high school schedule. Students race from one 50-minute class to another, attending as many as seven classes with seven different teachers in a single day. Teachers rush to get through the period's objectives before the bell rings, often running out of time just as the class gets rolling. With 125 or more students to teach, teachers struggle to learn about their pupils' strengths and weaknesses and to provide individual attention.
Still, when Wasson teachers discussed whether to try a different kind of schedule six years ago, “I wasn't in favor of making the move,” Schoenstein admits. Consider him a convert.
Wasson is one of a growing number of high schools adopting so-called block schedules. Although there are numerous variations, the key component of block schedules is the provision of longer class periods. Under Wasson's 4x4 plan, for example, students take four 90-minute classes each day. Classes meet daily in the longer format, so courses that used to last a year, such as algebra or English, now are finished in half that time, and classes that used to take a semester are over in nine weeks. Teachers teach no more than three classes at any given time, so they see 75–90 students during a term, not 150. Average class size, moreover, is slightly lower.
Schoenstein, who teaches English and Latin, is elated with the change. “It's a whole lot easier managing 75 kids,” he says, adding that he gets to know each student better. The longer classes also provide enough time for Schoenstein to use various instructional strategies. In 90 minutes, he can present information, organize students in pairs or cooperative learning groups, have a lively discussion, and get them to do some writing, says Schoenstein. In the past, he often found himself presenting until the bell rang, then telling students: “Remember all this stuff—tomorrow we'll practice it.”
Since Wasson adopted the new schedule in 1990, daily attendance, the percentage of pupils making the honor roll or going on to four-year colleges, and the number of course credits earned by students are all higher. The failure rate is lower. “It's made a dramatic difference,” Schoenstein says of the new schedule.
Myriad Options
The 4x4 plan used at Wasson is but one of a dozen or more options challenging the traditional high school schedule. Some schools, like Wasson, offer block classes every day, thereby cutting in half the duration of the course. Other schools offer block classes on a rotating schedule, with students attending three block classes one day and three different block classes the next (and leaving the duration of the course unchanged from a traditional schedule). Still others use a combination of block classes and regular periods. And a few have gone to trimester plans, which include block classes but divide the school year into thirds.
While many high schools double up periods to offer a longer session of a course like American Civ or humanities, the number using block schedules on a schoolwide basis has been relatively low. But that is changing.
In Virginia, for example, fewer than five high schools used some form of schoolwide block schedule four years ago. Now, 133 of the state's 290 high schools (46 percent) do, according to Michael Rettig, an assistant professor at James Madison University, who conducts an annual survey. Comparable data from other states are not available, but experts say that large numbers of high schools in states such as North Carolina, Colorado, Florida, and Texas are experimenting with block schedules. “There's much more interest now” in block schedules, says Robert Lynn Canady, education professor at the University of Virginia (see “The Power of Innovative Scheduling,” p. 4).
Many schools, like Wasson, had grown disenchanted with the traditional high school schedule. The conventional schedule “has only two things wrong with it,” jokes Joseph Carroll, who designed an alternative schedule known as the Copernican Plan. “It guarantees that teachers don't teach well and students don't learn well.... It almost requires that teachers do presentations every day,” says Carroll, because it's difficult to cram several activities into a 40- to 50-minute period. Further, it's hard for teachers to give a lot of individual attention to each student, because the period is so short and because teachers may see as many as 150 students each day. As a result, “a kid can go several days without having a meaningful interaction with a teacher,” says Carroll.
With a traditional schedule of 55-minute classes, “it seemed like I never got done what I wanted to get done,” says Carol Doschadis, a business education teacher at Champlin Park High School in Champlin, Minnesota, which is in its fourth year with a block schedule. For example, the logistics of trying to get 32 students up and running on 32 computers, completing their assigned work, and closing down before the bell rang, left Doschadis with little time to help each student. “I felt like I was always running,” she says.
Time to Innovate
With longer chunks of time devoted to each subject, block schedules can be a catalyst for classroom innovation, proponents say. The longer class periods liberate teachers whose innovative methods didn't fit the traditional schedule—and provide a nudge to teachers who “stand-and-deliver,” experts say. “You cannot just lecture” when classes run past one hour in duration, says Tom Shortt, director of secondary education for the Virginia Department of Education and former principal of a school using a block schedule. “The kids will eat you alive if you're not prepared to deal with them for this length of time.”
Leavitt Area High School in Turner, Maine, is in its fourth year with a block schedule. At first, one of the teachers' primary concerns was: “How can I keep kids busy for 80 minutes?” says Assistant Principal Jeffrey Sturgis. But since the switch, teachers at Leavitt have “moved wholesale into cooperative learning, groupwork, and much more emphasis on process in the classroom,” says Sturgis. Moreover, teachers find the schedule to be “less stressful,” in part because they only see half of their students on a given day.
At Champlin Park, Principal David Bonthuis believes that adopting a 4x4 plan has sparked instructional innovation. In visiting classrooms, “I definitely see a wider variety of activities” being used, such as cooperative learning, hands-on projects, and other strategies aimed at encouraging student involvement, Bonthuis says.
Brad Johnson, who teaches English and broadcasting at Champlin Park, says he found short class periods “stifling and confining, both for me and my students.” The new schedule “has given me a chance to do some things I hadn't had a chance to do before.” He believes that all students are more involved in his courses; in part because he has more time to have pupils work in pairs or small groups. The broadcasting course, he adds, allows students to work on an authentic task for a real audience—they put together a daily television news program and broadcast it schoolwide. The course “would be virtually impossible to teach in a regular schedule,” Johnson says, but students pull it off because the class meets every day for 85 minutes.
Schools that are moving to block schedules report other positive effects as well. In general, they say block schedules are more flexible, allowing them to accommodate students' different learning needs.
Benjamin Franklin High School in Palos Heights, Illinois, for example, is a small “lab” school based on the precepts of William Glasser. All students are expected to do “quality” work (no grades other than A or B are acceptable). Last year, the staff decided to move to a block arrangement “to find out if more time in class would result in quality work,” says Jeff Janes, a science and math teacher. “To a large extent it's worked.”
The school has organized its five academics into 90-minute classes. The longer classes allow teachers to group and re-group students according to what they've mastered, says Linda Lavery, the school's lead teacher. Since the school does not track students, this arrangement helps to accommodate the fact that students learn different subjects at different rates. The school also schedules a 45-minute period known as “quality time,” usually twice a week. Students use the time to reinforce skills they need help on, or to work ahead in the curriculum. “For the most part, students appreciate the extra time,” says Janes.
Block schedules in which the duration of a course is compressed—such as the 4x4 plan—are flexible in other ways. Students who wish to accelerate can do so relatively easily. For example, a student who wishes to can take “two years” of a foreign language or mathematics in a single year. By the same token, a student who fails a course can often repeat it without falling behind classmates. That's especially important to schools where students are prone to dropping out. With a traditional schedule, once it's clear a student will flunk several classes, that student has little incentive to stay in school until June, notes Canady. But if the school schedule allows students to put the term behind them and start anew, they might be willing to stick it out, he says.
Climate Improves
Many educators in schools using block schedules say that overall school climate improves as students and teachers spend more concentrated time with one another. The block schedule used at Independence High School in Columbus, Ohio, “personalizes the high school and allows teachers and kids to know one another better,” says Principal James Osborn. This is particularly true of block plans that reduce the number of students teachers see during a given term, as the trimester-based schedule used by Independence does.
Discipline problems have dropped at many of the schools using block schedules. “You might think that with 90 minutes in class, kids would go crazy and tear the walls down,” says Tom DeBolt, formerly the principal at Pulaski High School in Pulaski, Virginia. But disciplinary infractions at the school actually went down after the new schedule was enacted, said DeBolt, who is currently superintendent of the Manassas Park (Virginia) City Schools.
Under a traditional schedule, students and teachers at Wasson High School rushed from class to class, contributing to a stressful climate, says Schoenstein. Wasson now schedules 15 minutes passing time—compared to five under the old schedule—between block classes. That might seem like “a hall supervisor's nightmare,” Schoenstein admits, but in the context of the school's new plan, it works well. “One result of the block schedule has been a calmer place, fewer fights, less vandalism—just a slowed-down pace across the entire building.”
Obstacles Remain
That's not to say that adopting a block schedule is problem-free. Educators adopting various block schedules report several challenges.
One is ensuring that the instruction offered in block classes is appropriate for the longer format. Although longer classes support instructional innovation, they don't necessarily result in it, says Shortt. In his school, many teachers used different strategies in longer classes, but other teachers would give a lecture and then allow students to do homework, turning the course into an impromptu study hall. “It was almost the only problem we had to deal with in the classroom,” he says.
Students' attitudes toward block scheduling reflect how effective they perceived their teachers to be, says Canady. “If their teacher's good, they think block scheduling is wonderful; if their teacher's bad, it's awful.” Canady and others say that staff development on instructional techniques and curriculum development is critical to the success of block plans.
At Pulaski High School, teachers wanted assurance that staff development would be offered before they voted to adopt a block schedule, says DeBolt. Four years later, instruction in classrooms “has changed astronomically,” as teachers use multiple techniques to help students become active learners. Now, some of Pulaski's teachers are training teachers in other schools in cooperative learning, Socratic seminars, and other strategies, DeBolt adds.
A second question raised about block schedules is whether they permit as much of the curriculum to be covered as the traditional schedule. Depending upon the schedule a school is currently using, and the particular block schedule it switches to, the total number of minutes devoted to each course may decline. Some educators using block schedules say that certain classes cover just as much ground under block schedules; others, a little less. Ultimately, however, the important issue is how much students have learned, and students in block schedules are not scoring any lower on achievement tests, say educators using block schedules.
“We have had to eliminate a few things,” says Doschadis of Champlin Park. The school's new schedule means a business education course she taught for 55 minutes a day for 18 weeks now runs 85 minutes a day for nine weeks. Still, “I feel like I'm still covering the major content,” she says. Students might complete eight business letters rather than 10, she says, but the point is “Do they still know how to prepare a business letter? They do.”
Schoenstein says his first-year Latin course used to cover eight chapters of a textbook. In the first year using a block schedule, the class covered less of the book. But the classroom activities were more varied. Students worked in groups, taught one another, and got involved in creating evaluation devices. Given the same test as students who worked under a traditional schedule, the students in the block program scored 12–15 percent higher on vocabulary and translation, says Schoenstein. “My kids encounter less Latin on the block schedule, but they take more of it with them when the class ends. It's what they learn, not what I cover. That's the key in my mind.”
Schools using 4x4 plans or other models that do away with year-long classes must address other concerns, such as what to do about Advanced Placement and band courses. Supporters of band programs say they must be offered year-round, but that would result in students taking two credits of band each year. Advocates of AP courses wonder whether half-year courses, especially those taken in the fall semester, will prepare students to take AP exams in the spring. Certain modified versions of block schedules can address such concerns, though. For example, one block can be split and offered year-round, while the other blocks continue on a quarter- or half-year basis. Or, with AP classes, the longer block classes could run 3/4 of the year (ending at about the time that AP exams are given). “There are ways of dealing with all of these issues, if we want to,” says Canady. Still, concerns about these issues have scuttled discussions of block scheduling at some high schools.
Research Sketchy
Although there are many arguments for considering a move to block scheduling, hard data on the effects are scarce. In general, research has found that teachers and students like longer classes, and that students do at least as well on measures of academic achievement.
Champlin Park's program was carefully evaluated recently by the University of Minnesota. The study compared conditions at Champlin Park and another 4x4 school with the two traditional 7-period high schools in the Anoka-Hennepin school district. “The results are just overwhelmingly positive in favor of the four-period schedule,” says Bonthuis, Champlin Park's principal. Teachers in the four-period schools said the schedule allowed them to do their jobs better; students had more positive attitudes toward school, and pupils in four-period schools had higher levels of engagement, the study found.
Perhaps the most telling sign of the popularity of block scheduling is that teachers who experience it say they can't conceive of returning to the inflexible treadmill of 55-minute classes. “They're not saying it because [block scheduling] has made things easier for them,” says Bonthuis. “They think they're more effective in working with kids.” Doschadis agrees. If she had to return to a traditional schedule, “I would be in a state of depression,” she jokes.
