Scheduling

Instructional time must be maximized and protected. Fragmented instructional time has a negative impact on student achievement at all levels. In elementary school, practices such as haphazardly pullout programs and the schedule of specials often disrupt core instructional time. This can lead to piecemeal instruction. There is fragmentation at both the middle and high school levels as well. Students in a 6-8 period day lose large amounts of potential instructional time to class transitions and unconnected curriculum. This is often exacerbated by exploratory programs and elective offerings that don’t support student’s specific and individualized learning needs.

The school’s schedule can have a significant impact on the school’s culture and directly reflect the goals and vision of the school. The schedule should be student-centered and reflect the individual needs of each student. The schedule should provide structure and order to minimize discipline problems and time off tasks. Within I/E groups, the organization will contribute significantly to the effectiveness of instruction. Traditional middle and high school schedules create at least four situations that may contribute to the number of discipline problems:

1. Many disciplinary referrals result from scheduled transitions, when large numbers of students spill into hallways, lunchrooms, and commons areas, or congregate in locker rooms and bathrooms. If students are not sent to the office directly, the problems often carry over into the classroom, where teachers must deal with them before beginning instruction.

2. The assembly-line, traditional period schedule contributes to the depersonalizing nature of high schools. When teachers are responsible for 100–180 students daily, and students must answer to six, seven, or eight teachers a day, it is nearly impossible to develop close relationships, which may help reduce discipline problems.

3. Short instructional periods may also contribute to a negative classroom climate. When students who misbehave do not respond to a quick correction, many teachers send them to the office. With only 40- to 55-minute class periods, these teachers view any time taken away from classwork as unacceptable.

4. The middle school schedule, in particular, often makes teaming efforts difficult. Students in seven-period schools often are enrolled in three non-core classes, while the four-teacher teams—one teacher each from English, math, science, and social studies—are assigned five classes daily. Thus, during many periods of the day, 20 percent of the students are “off core.” As a result, teams must remain in a period schedule, and the team structure, which usually facilitates disciplinary control, is weakened.

Perhaps the most critical (and unresolved) time allocation issue that schools face is the indisputable fact that some students need more time to learn than others. Effective and efficient master schedules have these additional time allotments built into their framework. The model of providing “more” time for students demonstrating they need additional time has traditionally been retention/non-promotion, which research demonstrates has a negative impact on student learning and exponentially increases a student’s likelihood of dropping out of school. On the other end of the spectrum, the master schedule in most schools offer little to no opportunities for acceleration. In elementary school, our usual reaction to the need for different amounts of time for learning is to provide individual assignments to those who learn quickly, and to regroup, slow down, and provide pull-out programs for those who need more time. The problems with these accommodations are that (1) sometimes the activities provided for those who learn quickly are thrown together haphazardly (Renzulli 1986), and (2) students placed in the lower groups fall farther behind. In addition, students in pullout programs often are stigmatized by their participation in them.