Frankenschedule? Irked Albemarle parents slam 4x4 class plan
Superintendent Pam Moran (left) listens to one of more than a dozen parents decrying an Albemarle School Board move to save money.PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
In a county where over 60 percent of the high school students receive advanced studies diplomas, anything that gets in the way of relentless achievement can send angry villagers, er, parents, to confront the creators of the Frankenstein creature known as block scheduling.
The Albemarle School Board got a more than hour-long earful during an October 14 meeting, as 16 parents and students denounced block scheduling–- also known as 4x4–- and demanded that the board renounce classes compressed into one intense semester.
"I don't want the kids to be guinea pigs," protested pediatrician Lori Balaban.
"My daughter cannot keep up," said Dawn McCoy of her ninth grader.
"I see no clear justification for this program, which has been abandoned by many other school systems," said parent Mark Echelberger. Invoking Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, he added, "I fear teachers and students have been left standing on the shore."
At press time, 369 people had signed an electronic petition on the website of the organization formed to fight squeezing a formerly year-long class like algebra 2 into just one semester.
The plan gives students four 90-minute classes every day for a semester instead of spreading out shorter classes every other day throughout the school year, and it has created something of an uproar–- at least among a group known as CASE: Citizens of Albemarle Supporting Education.
"We knew it would be difficult," says Superintendent Pam Moran. In the face of a $6 million deficit, the School Board faced "some real Sophie's choices," says Moran, noting that the Board also considered sharing elementary school principals, furloughing staffers, cutting kindergarten hours–- as well as reducing art, music, and PE in elementary schools.
Instead, the board opted for an eight-period day in high schools in a plan that was supposed to save $800,000 by axing 22 jobs and forcing high school teachers, who haven't seen a raise in two years, to lift their workload 20 percent by teaching another class.
Dubbed "semesterization," block scheduling or 4X4 by its critics, even its nomenclature is controversial.
"I would love it if you'd not refer to it as 4X4," Albemarle schools spokeswoman Maury Brown tells a reporter. "It's a hybrid."
What the Albemarle School Board adopted during the dark days of winter's record snowfall and budget shortfalls is a hybrid schedule. At Western Albemarle, 60 percent of its classes are taught for the whole year and 40 percent of Albemarle's are. But other classes are squeezed into a compressed 4X4 model for one semester. And it's the 4X4 portion that's causing the consternation.
"I think all of them, to quote Little Shop of Horrors, would prefer a long, slow root canal," says Chris Mann, Latin teacher at Western Albemarle. He has more students than he's ever had in his 28 years of teaching, and he calls the morale "terrible, probably the worst I've seen." And he claims one Advanced Placement teacher who normally has 135 students has 175 this year.
In signing the online petition, Western Albemarle algebra teacher Charles Witt cites exhaustion and what he calls the lowest morale he's seen in 27 years of teaching. "To the parents of my 163 students in 6 classes," he writes, "I am sorry I cannot keep up with all of them and give them the individual attention they deserve."
One option for overburdened, stressed out teachers: "They'll just test less," suggests Mann. And Nancy Hiles Johnson found another solution to the increased workload.
"It is exactly the reason I left Western," says Johnson. "I loved it. But I was already working all day." The extra class would have upped her student load from 100 to 160, and required foregoing a personal life, she says. Now she's teaching 58 students at the private Tandem Friends School.
Tucker Winter also fled Albemarle employment for Tandem."I left because I was so upset by 4X4," says Winter, who worries about the quality of work suffering and her own fatigue "when I thought about having 170 papers to grade at a time."
High school class sizes have grown this year, and the number of classes with more than 27 students has doubled over last year, according to a county school report. But Matt Haas, director of secondary education, disputes the notion that all teachers have 170 students. He says he knows of one at Albemarle High, and that teacher is getting extra pay. And Haas, who served as AHS principal before going to the central office, is teaching one block English class himself.
Matt Haas is in charge of making the 4X4 hybrid schedules work in Albemarle high schools.PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE
The CASE parents say that the compressed classes have made it impossible to read the same number of literature classics or to hold the labs and discussions that enliven learning–- because there's simply not enough time.
Compressed classes "encourage cramming, not learning," architect Candace Smith told the Albemarle School Board. "I want my daughter to have a passion for learning."
"Semesterization flies in the face of the research," said Amy Halliday at the School Board meeting, and several others echoed her concern that learning sticks when it has time to be absorbed.
The group compiled a 40-page dossier of the scientific research on the benefits of spaced learning that they plan to present to School Board members by October 28.
The summer learning loss is pretty well known. Parents and students are concerned about having eight-month gaps in classes like math or foreign language.
For example, Alison Visokay mentions her son Adam, a junior at Albemarle High. Most of his classes are AP, which meet every other day for the entire year, but he wasn't able to get the 4X4 honors trigonometry he wanted this fall, which means a gap from last year's algebra 2 until January. And he's got the same situation with honors French 4, another class he won't be able to take until spring. "He's worried he's going to lose a lot of that," says Visokay.
"My son is pretty tired of physics every day," says Albemarle spokeswoman Brown. "But he has German every day and loves it."
The speed with which the School Board decided on the compressed classes is another factor that irks the Albemarle county parents accustomed to a process that typically allows multiple public hearings before any major change.
"We're very process oriented," acknowledges Superintendent Moran. "There's a big price any time you make a change of this magnitude."
And with the sudden schedule change and teachers who haven't seen a raise being asked for more work, "You have a perfect storm," says Moran.
Despite the pleas of some parents, the Board of Supervisors, which obtained a more conservative majority in last year's election, refused to increase property taxes, and Moran doesn't mince words about her view of all the cost-cutting.
"We're cutting into the marrow of this school division," she says.
Moran suggests an inquiry to Charlottesville, Louisa, Nelson or Fluvanna, all of which have some version of the block hybrid model.
"No issue," says the city's Gertrude Ivory. "We've had a modified block scheduling in high school since I came here in 2004." And this fall, the city moved to that schedule in its middle school as well.
Ian Prum, a junior at Albemarle high, says his 4x4 physics class is going fine, "just a little rushed." And he's not thrilled about the homework every day. He, too, has a gap in German from last May until January. "I'm worried about forgetting some," he says.
Prum liked the scheduling last year better, but says, "I think there's not as many negatives as people say. They don't like it because people are hesitant to change." He adds, "Overall, I'm not sure the positive aspects are greater than the negatives."
The Albemarle School Board agreed to a work session on the issue in early November.
Updated 10/25/10 with the correct spelling of Lori Balaban's name.
Updated 10:15am 10/26/10 with the latest number of petition signatures.
36 comments
@ Parent.....my post is actually longer, and includes a letter to the LA Times on the folly of value-added measures. But because there are a half-dozen hyperlinks in the letter, it doesn't seem to get by The Hook's Bigfoot monitor.
@ Parent,
Thanks for that ââ?¬Å?vote” of confidence. There is indeed much work to do. Much. Work. To. Do.
Consider the following statement from a top city schools official in the Daily Progress after SAT scores for city and county were released a year ago:
ââ?¬Å?These results show that our focus on closing the achievement gap is paying off for Charlottesville students. The students’ strong performance across all groups and all tests is evidence of our schools’ commitment to high standardsââ?¬â?and of the high regard for academic excellence that our students and families share.”
The statement from the county was even worse. More phoney baloney about how the SAT scores show just how hard teachers were working, the curriculum is balanced, etc. blah, blah, blah.
The problem? None of it is true. The SAT is a mostly worthless test because it doesn’t do anything. In fact SAT is now an acronym that doesn’t stand for anything. Here’s probably the best single article on the SAT and the manner in which colleges use it for their own nefarious purposes (a more comprehensive read is The Big Test, by Nicholas Lemann):
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-best-class-money...
Rather than help to educate the general public, school officials help to perpetuate myth. They invite so-called ââ?¬Å?experts” to preach to their teachers about the importance of test scores, when the current use of standardized test scores violates all basic assessment principles. These ââ?¬Å?experts” (the county, in particular, has utilized many high-priced ââ?¬Å?consultants” who misrepresent what learning is, and worse, misrepresent their own accomplishments) tell teachers they must ââ?¬Å?assess” school- and/or division-wide at LEAST eight times a year (twice a quarter), and preferably more, using ââ?¬Å?common assessments.”
The county dropped about a million bucks several years back on SchoolNet, data tracking software ââ?¬â?? for ââ?¬Å?data-driven decisions making” ââ?¬â?? developed by an investment banker and a guy who’s never had a kind word to say about public education (Dennis Doyle) and misrepresented its quality. Its Board of Directors is more than a little conservative, including David Kearns, former Xerox executive, who’s blamed the schools for the economic problems in the U.S. and George Allen’s former state superintendent, who gave us the SOLs. The maintenance fees for SchoolNet are steep too, but it’s all about the data, you see.
The purpose of those ââ?¬Å?assessments” (which are often poorly written multiple choice questions)? To prepare students for the SOLs, themselves not the best measure of much. Some years back, when the state Technical Advisory Committee for the SOLs recommended the state conduct consequential validity studies of the SOLs (to get whether or not those tests predicted high school graduation or college performance or readiness for the workplace”Š) the state dissolved the committee.
In vogue today is the use of test scores to determine teacher effectiveness. Fighting against these ââ?¬Å?value-added” measures is perceived as supporting the ââ?¬Å?failed status quo” (Joe Scarborough, for example) or endorsing teachers unions who hate kids, or resisting needed change. Rather than fight such stupidity, too many education ââ?¬Å?leaders” just go along, even though all the research studies show value-added measures deeply flawed. The National Academies sent a letter to the Obama administration of value-added use.
Below is an overview of a recent study showing just how bad valued-added is (the research panel consists of some of the top education researchers in the country):
http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/news_from_epi_leading_experts_caut...
As I said, there is much work to do. The mainstream press can help, but it doesn’t (at least not much”ŠValerie Strauss of the Post is an exception). Instead it tends to foment ââ?¬Å?crisis” and downplay success. This summer the Los Angeles Times released value-added scores for 6,000 elementary teachers. It was warned of the problems with value-added scores, but published them anyway (one teacher, by all accounts a caring, devoted and high-quality teacher who received a lower-than-average value-added score, committed suicide).
Democracy, Looking at your URL-sites--- even with the $$$$$$$ per student we are dishing out in taxes Albemarle County does are not even come close to a model that will work. Their world class model would be laughed right out of a room with Ms. Darling-Hammond et-al.
How do we get system has to change to serve the students and teachers in the classrooms not the downtown administrators. How do we get them to stop making up data points and telling us our schools are better when they are not. Frankenstein- we are truly back in the dark ages of experimentation.
Run for office Democracy
@ Mar
First and foremost, the American public education system is NOT "failing." You see that in the press but it's inaccurate. The slam on public education has existed for quite some time....invariably pushed by conservatives who've never really like public education (witness the Tea Partiers who call it socialistic and want to abolish it).
Bashing public education really took off when A Nation at Risk was published in 1983. More screed than truth, it warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" that threatened the nation's security. But it was bogus. See: http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
The proof came soon after when Admiral James Watkins, Secretary of Energy under Bush1, got the Sandia National Labs involved in education research. The Sandia Report, as it was called, took up the entire issue of the May/June 1993 of The Journal of Educational Research and made clear there was no systemic crisis in American public education. That report was initially suppressed by Bush's Education Department (allegedly Diane Ravitch, who has now come out against No Child Left Behind and Obama's Race to the Top [both bad, by the way], had a prominent role in the suppression as an Asst. Sec. of Education). But it did emerge. Here's recently-deceased researcher Gerald Bracey on Sandia:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/righting-wrongs_b_75189.html
As Bracey (and some others, like David Berliner and Iris Rotberg) has reported in article after article, when the international test scores (notably TIMSS and PISA) are disaggregated, American students perform pretty well. What is the KEY factor in making the overall averages relatively low? Poverty. Take out student scores from schools with high concentrations of poverty, and American averages look pretty good.
But rather than confront this, the reform agenda has been a "business model" approach. And the final output is test scores, not people, not soon-to-be citizens. And that model has failed miserably, just as sure as supply-side economics has wrecked the national security and jeopardized the country's economic future and laid waste to millions of people and thousands of communities.
As Diane Ravitch now says, ..."we were wrong. We didn't see how completely standards-based reform would turn into a basic skills testing frenzy or the negative impact it would have on educational quality."
Still, we now have groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ââ?¬â??ââ?¬â?? which has lobbied incessantly for polices that produced huge budget and trade deficits, and is spending record amounts of undisclosed-donor funds to influence the 2010 elections for even more supply-side madness ââ?¬â??ââ?¬â?? issuing reports (Leaders and Laggards) wailing that the "crisis" in public education threatens our nation''s economic future.
As if students and teachers created and sold credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Like it was the teachers who perpetrated mortgage fraud and lied that all their mortgage foreclosure paperwork was properly and legally documented. As if educators turned Wall Street into one big casino.
Back to the question about Finland. Bottom line, social programs that help students and parents and communities actually work. They end up producing better achievement. We've known this for years and years. The Chamber and others, however, find it more convenient to blame the schools, advocate for more charters and vouchers, more testing, and let poverty increase (which it has).
Meanwhile, they push for more tax cuts and "incentives" and loopholes for themselves.
[Quick aside: if the rich are richer that ever (they are), if corporations are now sitting on record amounts of cash (they are), and if they've been financially bailed-out by taxpayers (they were), and if they've already been given tax break after tax break (they have).....why aren't they hiring? The supply-side argument has always been that if you give individuals and businesses tax cuts and incentives and money, then they'd create jobs....so why aren't they?]
One of the best thinkers and researchers in education today is Linda Darling-Hammond. Obama strongly considered her for Secretary of Education (he should have appointed her). Instead, we got the business flack, Arne Duncan (at least Obama can shoot some ball with him). Duncan's tenure as superintendent in Chicago was no success story.
Her's Darling-Hammond on Finland:
http://www.publicpolicyblogger.com/2010/10/linda-darling-hammond-what-we...
@ Mar
First and foremost, the American public education system is NOT ââ?¬Å?failing.” You see that in the press but it’s inaccurate. The slam on public education has existed for quite some time”Š.invariably pushed by conservatives who’ve never really liked public education (witness the Tea Partiers who call it socialistic and want to abolish it).
Bashing public education really took off when A Nation at Risk was published in 1983. More screed than truth, it warned of a ââ?¬Å?rising tide of mediocrity” that threatened the nation’s security. But it was bogus.
The proof came soon after when Admiral James Watkins, Secretary of Energy under Bush1, got the Sandia National Labs involved in education research. The Sandia Report, as it was called, took up the entire issue of the May/June 1993 of The Journal of Educational Research and made clear there was no systemic crisis in American public education. That report was initially suppressed by Bush’s Education Department (allegedly Diane Ravitch, who has now come out against No Child Left Behind and Obama’s Race to the Top [both bad, by the way], had a prominent role in the suppression as an Asst. Sec. of Education). But it did emerge.
Here’s recently-deceased researcher Gerald Bracey on Sandia:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gerald-bracey/righting-wrongs_b_75189.html
As Bracey (and some others, like David Berliner and Iris Rotberg) has reported in article after article, when the international test scores (notably TIMSS and PISA) are disaggregated, American students perform pretty well. What is the KEY factor in making the overall averages relatively low? Poverty. Take out student scores from schools with high concentrations of poverty, and American averages look pretty good.
But rather than confront this, the reform agenda has been a ââ?¬Å?business model” approach. And the final output is test scores, not people, not soon-to-be citizens. And that model has failed miserably, just as sure as supply-side economics has wrecked the national security and jeopardized the country’s economic future and laid waste to millions of people and thousands of communities.”šAs Diane Ravitch now says, ”Š”we were wrong. We didn’t see how completely standards-based reform would turn into a basic skills testing frenzy or the negative impact it would have on educational quality.”
Still, we now have groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ââ?¬â??ââ?¬â?? which has lobbied incessantly for polices that produced huge budget and trade deficits, and is spending record amounts of undisclosed-donor funds to influence the 2010 elections for even more supply-side madness ââ?¬â??ââ?¬â?? issuing reports (Leaders and Laggards) wailing that the ââ?¬Å?crisis” in public education threatens our nation’’s economic future.
As if students and teachers created and sold credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations. Like it was the teachers who perpetrated mortgage fraud and lied that all their mortgage foreclosure paperwork was properly and legally documented. As if educators turned Wall Street into one big casino.
Back to the question about Finland. Bottom line, social programs that help students and parents and communities actually work. They end up producing better achievement. We’ve known this for years and years. The Chamber and others, however, find it more convenient to blame the schools, advocate for more charters and vouchers, more testing, and let poverty increase (which it has).”šMeanwhile, they push for more tax cuts and ââ?¬Å?incentives” and loopholes for themselves.”š[Quick aside: if the rich are richer that ever (they are), if corporations are now sitting on record amounts of cash (they are), and if they've been financially bailed-out by taxpayers (they were), and if they've already been given tax break after tax break (they have).....why aren't they hiring? The supply-side argument has always been that if you give individuals and businesses tax cuts and incentives and money, then they'd create jobs....so why aren't they?]
One of the best thinkers and researchers in education today is Linda Darling-Hammond. Obama strongly considered her for Secretary of Education (he should have appointed her). Instead, we got the business flack, Arne Duncan (at least Obama can shoot some ball with him). Duncan’s tenure as superintendent in Chicago was no success story.
Here’s Darling-Hammond on Finland:
http://www.publicpolicyblogger.com/2010/10/linda-darling-hammond-what-we...
thanks Democracy for the mini education.... im going to check these links out.
I advise college students as part of my job, and believe me, the 4 x 4 as it is currently implemented at AHS (don't know about Greene Country or other schools) does not resemble college. We certainly do not advise students at UVA to take a semester of a foreign language, calculus, or organic chemistry in their first year, then skip a semester plus a summer, then take up the next semester some time in their second year.
Further explanation for anyone who doesn't have kids in H.S:
"Block scheduling" is not a change. The middle and high schools have been on block scheduling for a long time, with 4 classes per day. This has lots of advantages, including more time for labs and in-depth discussions, and less time wasted changing classes. In the high schools, 4 classes alternated with 3 classes and the "8th" period was used for remediation, enrichment or clubs (with slight variations from school to school).
The switch from 7 to 8 courses per year saves the school system money by having each teacher teach more classes, and this is the explanation for the emergency passage of this change by the school board without any community input.
This is COMPLETELY UNRELATED to the semesterization issue. The schools could have gone an 8-course-per-year schedule very easily (from a scheduling standpoint), by alternating 4 block classes each day. Moving to semester classes was NOT an emergency, and is the sort of major change that never should be adopted without community discussion.
I remember being a student and a year round swimmer with practice every day, 2-a-day practices twice a week with some meets during weekends... this gave me 2 hrs max of the day to study, eat, and be a teen, relax, etc. It was hard and i wanted to do soo much more but couldnt without seriously giving up either my grades or sanity.
this may be way off left field and crazy.... i think we should have school year round/ 4 days a week/ shorten days to 2pm/ 2 weeks xmas break and 2 weeks summer break. This will give time for extra activities in the day, keep kids occupied, longer weekends, etc. In my perfect world this would be great, but of course i know the world doesnt revolve around me. :)
I don't think there is any one answer, Mar. Every country is different. Also, as Americans, we're not big on learning what other nations do because we don't believe we can learn from them.
We had 4x4 block scheduling when I was in high school in Orange County (Virginia) in the 1990s. I was a fan (as much as a 17 year old can be a fan of school). I feel like block scheduling helped me get ready for college - both having two semesters and having longer classes (90 minutes instead of 45). I just can't imagine teachers cover much material in a 45 minute class. The way I remember it, you could basically subtract 10 minutes from the beginning and end of a high school class with taking attendance and the general settling down at the outset or packing up in anticipation of the bell. The comments above are wildly vitriolic, but I imagine it has more to do with resistance to change than any substantive problem with block scheduling. Anyway, I'm at an age where my memory of high school is fading, and I don't yet have children of my own so I couldn't possibly have less invested in this, but here's one person saying that I had block scheduling and turned out fine - I think.
Can someone educate me on why our school systems are failing? Why we are 20something in the world? What are these other countries doing that we aren't? No one seems to really know without biased rants on politics. Facts please! Thanks.
It’s nice that Tim and Andrew took the time to share, anecdotally, their experiences with a 4 x 4 while in high school.
But in the later 1990s (Tim) the current SOLs were really just ramping up, and No Child Left Behind didn’t yet exist so there were no intense testing pressures like there are today. In addition, while AP certainly existed then, schools and parents hadn’t yet gone AP crazy (and why is it that the AP courses are given an alternating year-long schedule while other courses get crammed into a semester?).
Andrew’s contention that the 4 x 4 semesterization prepares students for college, holds little water. The county schools have been on a semester credit system for several years now, so students are already familiar with it. Moreover both Parent and Lori point out the distinct differences between learning in high school and college. The only thing that is similar is the semester time frame. The number of courses taken, the times those courses meet, the environment in which learning occurs, and the time allowed for processing and interacting with classmates are all quite different.
This particular 4 x 4 bastardization (which may be a more apt term than the ââ?¬Å?hybrid” preferred by the school spokeswoman) gives teachers a 20% increase in course load, and a corresponding increase (depending on exactly what class size is) in student load without any increase in pay (especially since salaries have been frozen).
You can almost bet that county school leaders haven't taken any steps to assess the impact of the 4 x 4 on student and teacher motivation and morale. In fact, the Resources Utilization study conducted for the schools in late 2007 reported that
ââ?¬Å?there have been indications that employee climate surveys would be
implemented in the school division, this has not yet been accomplished,” and recommended that human resources ââ?¬Å?conduct a climate survey at
the various school sites, as requested from the field. Currently, one is in place on the local government side.”
That climate survey, promised for years, has yet to be implemented. Given the stagnated salaries, the increased workload and stress ââ?¬â?? for both teachers and students ââ?¬â?? and the fact that the county schools have collected inaccurate and misleading salary comparison data for years, it seems pretty clear what the results might be like.
The county central office has tried to highlight the ââ?¬Å?opportunities” for students under the 4 x 4, but the simple fact is that there's a lack of a solid research base to show any achievement boost due to the 4 x 4. What’s more, even 4 x 4 advocates admit that there is a decrease in the content that is covered, and since classes meet every day there is an accelerated pace of instruction. And while"high achievers" may still do well, "low achievers" may fare worse, falling behind and never catching up.
Because content is diminished and instructional pace accelerated, the 4 x 4 is not conducive to deep, meaningful, authentic learning, i.e. learning for understanding (such learning requires students to read and to think, to ponder, to inquire, to argue and discuss and debate in class, to write thoughtful papers). With more classes and more students, teachers cannot provide the kind of learning assignments that facilitate that kind of learning. As this article reports, some have left the system.
Another problem with the 4 x 4 ââ?¬â?? not cited in the article ââ?¬â?? is that time is of premium importance, so teacher and student absences due to illnesses (flu) or bad weather (a winter like last year's) may cause serious disruptions to instruction and to learning (and to test scores).
Allegedly, the main reason the county went to the 4 x 4 was to save money, yet because there were so many scheduling problems over the summer additional staff had to be brought in to "fix" the scheduling snags. There were some extra payments and schedule changes made, thus the county is not likely to realize that entire $800,000 in savings. One also has to wonder why high school teachers are picking up extra students and courses, but the county still staffs 30 instructional coaches (if each makes about $50,000, that's a $1.5 million outlay. Is there evidence that the coaches makes any impact on achievement?) who are not in the classroom on a daily basis.
JJ Malloy says to ââ?¬Å?relax.” Hear that parents and teachers?
My high school did block scheduling. It was fine.
Parents need to relax.
Just to leave a comment and open up some more discussion, my son was in Albemarle County schools until High School. He struggled daily with the 7 period type schedule. We moved, thus he had to go to a different school. The high school he had to move to had "block" scheduling...I am not sure if it's that same 4x4 you are speaking of BUT he excelled and did wonderful! Graduated with an advanced diploma and took classes I never even dreamed he would even try much less pass with a grade no less than a B. Albemarle was trying to push me into just a standard diploma and praying he could accomplish that. So I am really perplexed as to the hostility to the 4x4 (hybrid block I assume). Will have to look further into this. I hope that all this is not just because of "change". Which I found Albemarle County to be VERY resitant to.
There is NO WAY to cover the same amount of material in a semester that can be covered in a year. Students cannot read or write in one night what they can do in two nights.
With every-other-day classes, if students miss a day or don't understand an assignment, they can get help on the "off" day and be prepared for their next class. With semester classes, they can go to the next class lost, and then fall even more behind. Further, teachers say that by the time they can hand back a paper or test to the students, the class has moved so far ahead that it's almost irrelevant.
The speed of these semester classes requires CRAMMING, pure and simple. I see my son learning large amounts of material in one night. He may be smart enough to get it right on a test the next day, and maybe even the SOL at the end of the course, but I am very worried that he will not retain this material longterm, and this is what really matters. The SOLs are a MINIMUM standard. I don't think we want to be striving toward this as the goal for most of our students. Colleges are complaining that they need to offer remedial classes to incoming freshmen from various school systems. I don't want ACPS to be one of these!
Look, Andrew--- you need to think about what is really going on with our 4x4 in 2010. The 4x4, or the 4x4 hybrid is not like college. These high school students are coming into school at 8am (zero period) and get a 21 min lunch break all day, they get 3 to 5 min.s to get to class. There is no time to get to a locker never mind make up a test, or finish a project. Many students leave the high school complexes at 7pm, after drama, band, sports practices. The school does not have office hours for their teachers, writing centers to access help with assignments, a media center to get a computer if you don't happen to have one at home, the school lirbray is not even open past 4pm. College and HS can not be compared. There is no time to process, no time to plan a study group except from 7 to midnight. As far a 8 month breaks between classes, I hope that you would think about how learning is accomplished. Maybe take a education course would help you. Mastery of a subject vs expanding the knowledge of one is a very different process, so HS courses like Math and Science where building on a concept is needed may not benifit from a 8 month break.
Tim - you stole the words out of my mouth, and I'm so glad you shared more eloquently than I have time to right now.
I went to a high school that had 4 classes a day, 2 semesters, all 4 years (except AP's, which this article does mention). It was fine. It didn't result in less of a passion for learning or anything like that. I will agree that the gap in classes like math did require some catch up when you took your next one, but big picture, I think this schedule is a good for students because it better prepares them for college.
College is broken into SEMESTERS. Not only that, but college classes don't meet every day -- often it's 2-3 times a week, but sometimes just once a week. I don't see colleges switching to year long classes, so I think there's value in kids getting some practice with this kind of system. Maybe it requires some extra work on the students (like saving their notes to review while they have a gap in a class). Bottom line though is that's 100% in a student's control. If they (or there parents) feel that strongly about forgetting things, they have the power to do something about that. That's what you do in college if you know you won't take the next class for a semester or two -- you save your notes and do your best to be ready for the next course.
I am sure there are alot of behind the scene activities parents and taxpayers would frown on but we'll keep those secret...after all this is a government school system. Full disclosure...nonsense!
Wait until parents catch wind of what the school board's been up to behind the scenes concerning the new proposed summer start date...
Tim, it's possible, sometimes, to use the 4 x 4 schedule to "double up," taking, say, Spanish 2 and 3 in the same year--provided too many other students are not trying to do the same thing. However, if you do that with more than one core academic class, it's impossible to take any electives, such as art, music, drama, or computer science. Also, it's not possible to do this in all academic areas. For instance, in my daughter's case, I did not want her to have a 9-month gap between finishing precalculus and starting AP calculus. So I had her sign up for 2 different precalculus classes, honors trig and honors math analysis. However, the curriculum in these two classes overlaps, so she will be forced to repeat some material.
One point the article doesn't mention is that kids on sports teams at AHS have to go to northern VA to compete (the school is too big to be in the same division as Monticello or WAHS). They often leave on buses for games or meets while school is still in session, and get home around midnight. A compressed schedule is especially punishing for these students--or for any kid with significant extracurricular commitments.
Katharine,
Just as an aside, I was in band class for every semester we had the 4x4. That wasn't an issue at all (still had 6 classes per year that were not electives, so I didn't fall behind at all), but I did run into issues with the Alternating-7 where i had to not take band for an entire school year because the class conflicted with the AP classes I wanted to take for college. Thankfully that was my senior year, so I didn't have to worry about falling behind anything.
Obviously the setup here is different, and I understand that.
That's why parents need to homeschool. Forget the failed public school system. Take matters into your own hands and do it right. It also eliminates all the nonsense that goes along with school. The vicious girl cliques, the bullying, the emphasis on fashion and materialism and who's "cool" and who's not, and everything else that detracts from a straight forward education.
Our "educational" system as a whole is a joke. Read John Gatto. Former NY Teacher of the Year winner who quit his position as a teacher via an Op-Ed piece to the NY Times, declaring that he was "no longer willing to hurt children." That, coming from an actual teacher of the year. So what does that tell you about the nature of this country's school system?
Kids don't need to be in school for as many years as they are, you can learn all the basics of what you need to know to get by in the world in a matter of a few years. But the reason the system drags it out for over 12 years is to ensure that kids receive the maximum amount of indoctrination and lies. But it doesn't need to be this way............and it didn't used to be.
An excerpt from John Taylor Gatto's speech given on January 31, 1990, when accepting an award from the New York State Senate naming him New York City Teacher of the Year. The name of his speech was called "The Psychopathic School - The Failure of the Modern School System."
"Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the State of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted - sometimes with guns - by an estimated eighty percent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard.
"Now here is a curious idea to ponder. Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was ninety-eight percent, and after it the figure never exceeded ninety-one percent, where it stands in 1990.
Here is another curiosity to think about. The home-schooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents; last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think..."
http://www.sntp.net/education/gatto.htm
Something to keep in mind.
As a student in Chesterfield County in the late 90s, I had the experience of having a 4x4 schedule at my high school for the first couple of years. When the school board decided to get rid of it (in favor of the Alternating-7), the students actual staged walk-outs during class time in protest. Certainly some students did so just to get out of class; but there were plenty who were actually angry it was being taken away from us.
In my experience, the 4x4 provided a much better prologue to what I would experience in college - fewer classes at one time, each subject completed in one semester. It also allowed students to progress further in their education - taking 8 classes each academic year, rather than 7.
The comments about "8 months between classes," some specifically referring to foreign languages, are the most interesting to me. That in particular was the strong suit of the 4x4, in my opinion. You could take two years of a subject (say, Spanish II and III or algebra 1 and 2) in the same calendar year.
The way our system was set up was that the even years of a language (II, IV, VI) were taught in the fall and the odd years (I, III, V, VII) were taught in the spring. As a freshman, I was able to complete my language requirement (needing three years of a language and having taken the first year in middle school) in just one academic year (Spanish II in the fall, Spanish III in the spring). That allowed me to move on and take classes that were more important to myself and my education (AP classes, classes that prepared me for my college subjects, etc).
It's fairly clear that the structure of the 4x4 here is different than it was for me, and there are some other circumstances at play (overcrowding, for instance) that weren't there for me. But I just find some of the comments about the 4x4 to be pretty far off-base from my own experience as a student and thought I could share my experiences (and I'll now watch in amusement as people show up to bash my opinion).
As the parent of a middle schooler, I think the block scheduling system is ridiculous. We are already making plans to move. The school board needs to be sued, but we don't have the time to wait for a court case to be resolved. This is incredibly frustrating and disappointing and unnecessary.
I think the reason that this new "hybrid" 4x4 system in Albemarle is failing is that the school board implemented it for all the wrong reasons. All they were thinking about was saving $$$$, not about the students or teachers. How can this school system give all the administrators iPhones and use thousands of dollars worth of GPS devices to track school buses, but they don't want to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes and give the students a better education? It just seems to me that they don't really have their priorities in the right place. *NO* scheduling system is going to work out for Albemarle county if they are getting rid of teachers and the number of students stays the same or increases, simple as that.
I went to Western Albemarle back in the 80's. Now I have friends whose children attend school there. I was so disappointed to hear that the school had switched to a 4x4 block schedule. My high school son has been in 4x4 block in California for 2 years. It's been a nightmare. Unfortunately we are faced with moving mid-year to another school that is not 4x4 block. My son will have to "catch up" on three classes in order to remain in his grade. To those who say that this schedule prepares a high school student for college, I say BS. High school and college are two different things. Teenagers don't need the added stress. Cut them some slack.
Teenagers are WAY more advanced than kids 5, 10 and 20 years ago so "give them a break" is not the way to go. In my opinion. I have a senior and freshman in high school and the efforts to prepare them for the next level of their education is more difficult now than ever before. I am not a teacher, I don't work for the school district but I think this has potential. The opinions that matter most and should carry the most weight would come from teachers. They are the experts and know what works best for them in teaching children. Any teachers out there, I'd love to hear your opinion/concenrs.
Why not have "year round" 4x4? Basically have a spring, fall and summer semester, with a break of a week or two between each? This would reduce the time between classes, and give students more flexibility with scheduling, while not getting in the way of family vacations etc.
What is the current argument against year round school? It doesn't seem like kids that are an integral part of family farms like in the past.
Hook your first paragraph is smarmy and unjustified:
"In a county where over 60 percent of the high school students receive advanced studies diplomas, anything that gets in the way of relentless achievement can send angry villagers, er, parents,to confront the creators of the Frankenstein creature known as block scheduling"
Besides being sophomoric and tedious writing, this suggests that there's something wrong with the educational agenda of those parents who care enough to see that their children aren't subjected to precipitous changes with no community input. This isn't Scarsdale parenting, it's giving a damn.
bill marshall,
I know UVA graduates who can't understand all the terms in car loans. LEnders are all about trying to snooker people on the bottom line. It's called being naive and young, which you were once too.
Yes, public schooling is having a problem, but those most responsible for the outcome are those being dumped on the most and expected to work for pennies. The teachers.
is ablemarle able to do anything right?
If the current lawsuits against the county by employees (retirees, bus drivers, police and others) are any indication, the county sure does know how to screw people.
Democraqcy,
The US education system IS a joke. An overwhelming minority of kids graduate utterly clueless. The kids that succeed are the ones who would have suceeded in ANY system. 40 years ago you had a few failures, a few successes and a lot in the middle who did just fine. Today, you have do more successes, but way way more failures. And lots and lots of people out there who are unable to function in their daily lives. They cannot balance a checkbook , they cannot read a rental agreement or negotiate a car loan. They cannot explain the function of Government as was established. A lot of them are under the impression that Thomas Jefferson was married to "weezy".
I teach in the county. I am trying to do a good job. A job that continues to get harder each year I am employed and I currently do not have "any" morale. Say what you will about salaries, downtown's motivations, constant change, workload, etc; bottom line is we don't get much support and certainly don't get input. We are excluded from the "process" and when we do voice concerns it is written off as "griping". I have many issues...far too many too voice here...but make no mistake there is a lot of money to be made here and businesses are cashing in on our tax(I also live in the county and dutifully pay my taxes) dollars and doing a poor job. Back on message here...
Regarding the adoption of this schedule. The following is from Michael Rettig (a school schedule expert from JMU)and was sent out by county leaders to employees to help convince us this was a good thing. One portion read as follows:
"What mistakes have some schools made when implementing block schedules?"
-The use of flawed decision-making process to adopt a block schedule.(check)
-Poor preparation for teaching in the block, including insufficient staff development and/or inattention to course pacing.(check)
-Unclear goals, over promising or not meeting promises made.(check)
-Poor scheduling decisions in the adoption phase.(check)
-Budgetary concerns(check)
-The lack of a rigorous formal evaluation.(check)
Wow we got them all! Where is the "ACCOUNTABILITY " from downtown?
All this made worse by a new Student Information System that to this day cannot understand that we are on this "Hybrid' 4x4 and you have created schools that are struggling to make it(more examples of companies having a say in our schools). Thanks to the counselors and staff and building level admins who busted their tails to clean up this mess as best as they were able. This schedule takes the worst of both words not the best. Certainly it may get easier in time to function like this OR those who feel otherwise will be forced to give up as usual. I really feel for the kids...many are barely hanging on and while I can adjust I am not sure many of them will be able to as easily.
Now is the time for leadership. Someone down in that office building off McIntire has to have some common sense and I wish they'd speak up, clearly they did not comment in this article. If you don't want to...here's an idea...ask people WHO ACTUALLY WORK WITH KIDS EVERY DAY before you do something big again! We by no means know everything...but we are not all "bad teachers and self serving union members" responsible for the nebulous failure of our schools. If we didn't show up it'd make a difference. If downtown staff didn't show up, I'm not sure it would.
And parents should take some solace that our schools are still strong. Just not as strong as they once were or could be. We are still teaching, just not as thoroughly9which likely won't show up in SOL numbers since overall and subgroup pass rates are all that matter under NCLB). I love my students, my school and my profession. Just not all the poop that rains down on me from everywhere. I knew it would be hard and can live with that. But somebody somewhere needs to help me/us out. Fixing this schedule and at the very least acknowledging this was a mistake would be a great start.
@billmarshall
You've obviously not read much about education....but I'd love to know where you get those data on how good education was 40 years ago.
If you Google around a bit, you can likely access the Sandia report, which verifies what I've said. Or you can read most any of the Bracey reports on public education, which are chock-full of education data.
http://www.america-tomorrow.com/bracey/EDDRA/
Or you can try reading what Diane Ravitch says about the schools. Here's but one example:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/01/AR201004...
And I do hope you'l get back to the readers here with youyr references on education 40 years ago.
Otherwise, your post helps to prove my point: conservative, business-model approaches to public education "reform" have made things worse, not better. And that worsening can be traced directly back to A Nation at Risk, which was demonstrably false.
[Trying to Teach makes a good point that now is the time for leadership. The county schools have been woefully lacking in that regard. The Virginia Dept. Of Education is no better. And our governor is going to hold an education summit that will likely emphasize charters, already shown to be rarely better than regular pubic schools and more often worse. One would hope that at least some of the school superintendents attending the summit will speak out and voice opposition to misguided "reform," but don't hold your breath.]