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Block Scheduling: An Introduction

By Michael Rettig and Judith Cannizzaro

About the Authors

Michael Rettig is assistant professor of education at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He taught for ten years in the Syracuse, New York, schools and served as a school administrator in Martinsville and Lexington, Virginia, for six years. He is the co-author of Block Scheduling: A Catalyst for Change in High Schools and has served as a consultant on scheduling issues across the United States.

Judith Cannizzaro is K–12 Social Studies Supervisor for the Metropolitan Public Schools in Nashville, Tennessee.

During the past ten years a revolution has been taking place in the organization of the American high school. This revolution is known as the "block scheduling" movement. Schools across the country have changed from the single-period six-, seven-, or eight-period school schedule to "block schedules" in which students take fewer, but longer, classes daily. The pace of growth for schools implementing block scheduling has been dramatic. For example, in Virginia, fewer than five high schools operated a full school block schedule during the 1990–91 school year; during the 1995–96 school year, 46 percent of the state's 290 high schools have implemented a block schedule.

What's Wrong with the Single-Period Schedule?

"School discipline also is negatively affected by teachers' large student loads and short periods."

What has precipitated this dramatic change in the organization and use of time in secondary schools? Proponents of block scheduling criticize traditional high school scheduling models for the following reasons:

An assembly-line environment.

In traditional schedules students generally attend six, seven, or eight different classes daily and teachers teach five or six different classes. Teachers are asked to do the impossible—to address the intellectual and emotional needs of between 100 and 180 adolescents daily. Equally challenging is the task facing students—to adjust to the academic standards, behavior codes, teaching styles, homework, assignments, and tests of six, seven, or eight different teachers daily. If high schools are ever to improve, critics say, teachers must work with fewer students and students must work with fewer teachers.

Discipline problems.

Releasing a school full of adolescents into narrow hallways six, seven, or eight times a day is probably not the smartest invention of public school educators. Many of a school's discipline problems come from these transitions.

School discipline also is negatively affected by teachers' large student loads and short periods. Teachers who are responsible for 100–180 students find it difficult to develop the close relationships that are necessary to avoid "in-your-face" challenges. Perhaps if teachers saw fewer students, there would be a greater likelihood of improved student-teacher relations, and thereby, improved school discipline. In single-period schools with short classes, when discipline situations arise in the classroom and the offending student does not respond immediately to a quick correction by the instructor, the typical reaction of many teachers is to send the student to the office. In block classes, teachers report a greater willingness to ask the misbehaving student to step out into the hall, give the class a question or other assignment to focus on, and then spend a few minutes with the student discussing the issue in private.

Limited possibilities for in-depth study.

How can science teachers complete labs in 45 minutes? How much library research is possible in a social science class in 45 minutes? How realistic can a 45-minute simulation be in a government class? How much studio work is possible in a 45-minute art class? How many steps of the writing process can be addressed in a short English class? Short single periods offered by most single-period scheduling models limit flexibility of instructional strategies. Because of the time lost to start-up and clean-up, the actual time available for instruction is far less than the allotted period. When teachers are faced with short periods, they often resort to lecturing in order to cover the curriculum content.

Traditional scheduling models assume that all students learn at the same rate. All teachers know that some students take longer to learn than others. The only means of accommodating students who need more time to learn is to assign a grade of "F" and then require them to repeat the course! This is a punitive system; it also is an ineffective system for students who are not motivated.

Possibilities for acceleration in the American high school also are limited. Some students are able to advance in mathematics by completing Algebra I in eighth grade. This makes it possible for a student to be accelerated in mathematics and possibly take calculus in the senior year. If a student takes algebra in eighth grade, the option remains open; if not, calculus is ruled out in many high schools. Many educators argue that a system that allocates equal learning time for all students is unreasonably inflexible.

The Benefits of Block Scheduling

To address these problems and others, schools across the country have designed block schedules that try to accomplish some or all of the following goals:

• Reduce the number of students for whom teachers must prepare and interact with each day and/or each term.
• Reduce the number of courses for which teachers must prepare each day and/or term.
• Reduce the number of classes that students must attend and prepare for each day and/or each term.
• Reduce the number of class changes.
• Provide teachers with blocks of teaching time that allow and encourage the use of active teaching strategies and greater student involvement.
• Allow students time for learning, without lowering standards and without punishing those who need more or less time to learn.

Links

"Around the Block: The Benefits and Challenges of Block Scheduling"
This article addresses the benefits of block scheduling in the junior and senior high schools, and it describes a "block success" story.

So Many Schedules, So Little Time

Think a 4x4 is something you drive in the snow? Or that a Block 8 is some snazzy maneuver on the pool table? If so, consult the following glossary of terms before you start your plans to "go on the block":

• Intensive Block
  Students on an intensive block schedule concentrate on just one or two subjects at a time. The classic intensive block is the trimester plan, which has students completing two courses in 60 days, then moving on to two different courses. Teachers say they like the intensive block because they can concentrate their attention on fewer students at a time, but critics worry about kids who transfer to or from schools on traditional schedules.
  
  
• 4x4 Block
  Sometimes called the accelerated block, this schedule allows students to take four subjects each semester in blocks that last between 85 and 100 minutes each. The pace allows students to complete a year's work in a single semester. Again, teachers and kids seem enthusiastic, but the schedule makes midyear transfers difficult.
  
  
• A/B Plan
  This model is often called the Alternating Day Schedule or Block 8 because students attend eight blocks of classes over a two-day period. (Another variation is to schedule six blocks over two days.)
  
  Transfers are easier because students complete semester courses at about the same pace as students on a traditional schedule. Kenneth Goodson, technology coordinator for the Atlanta (Texas) Independent School District, which adopted the A/B plan for its high school last year, says "the faculty absolutely loves it" even though "there are times when [teachers] feel like they don't cover quite as much material. They feel like they need to put two days' worth of material into that one day, but they really can't always do that."
  
  
• Modified Block
  Many different plans go by this name. At some schools, a modified block means the school is on a 4x4 block four days a week, with a traditional seven or eight-period day that allows electives on Fridays. At others, it means students take two block courses and three single-period classes each day. (The block courses end after a semester, but the single-period classes continue all year to accommodate music, foreign languages, and other courses that need daily sessions.)
  
  The scheduling options multiply when schools combine different block modifications with different ways of dividing up the school year. The various pacing guides and the firsthand experiences in Tennessee and Massachusetts on this site give a sampling of what teachers are experiencing across the country.
  
  The students have two 75-day block-scheduled semesters; then, near the end of April—when, as Rettig says, "school's a bear"—the kids get a fresh start with a short semester in which teachers offer specialty courses in their subject areas. A California school is considering a 75-30-75 plan that would offer specialty courses in the middle of the year, the way many colleges do.
  
  "There's a whole lot going on out there," Rettig says, and not all of it is new. A military academy in Fort Union, Virginia, has been teaching one core subject at a time for 45 days at a stretch for the past 30 years. "Both the students and the teachers swear by it," Rettig says. "They can't believe anybody else can learn any other way."