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The New School on the Block

by Roger Schoenstein, chairman of the foreign languages department at Roy J. Wasson High School in Colorado Springs, Colorado

Reprinted with permission from The Executive Educator, August 1995. Copyright 1995, the National School Boards Association. All rights reserved.

"I did not start out as a big fan of block scheduling. . . . But five years on the block have changed my attitude completely."

I did not start out as a big fan of block scheduling. When the staff of Roy J. Wasson High School in Colorado Springs first talked about adopting the block schedule format, I remember saying to a fellow teacher, "If the school ain't broke, why fix it?"

But five years on the block have changed my attitude completely. The test scores, attendance rates, and general atmosphere at Wasson have improved so much that I've adopted a new saying: "You don't have to be sick to get better." The change wasn't easy, but there's no doubt about it: Wasson is a better school now than it was five years ago.

In 1990 Wasson was facing the same problems as many high schools across the country: a 31 percent failure rate, increasing stress levels, and a sense of "a bad fit" between the students and the goals teachers held for them. We operated on the same bell schedule and the same seven-period day that had been in place since the school opened in 1959.

A needs-assessment survey showed the staff was most concerned about class size, limitations in course offerings, teacher workload, and stress (for both teachers and students). A faculty steering committee noticed most of the problems revolved around a time crunch, so it began looking at different scheduling options. Many possibilities—even year-round schooling—were considered before the committee decided a 4x4 schedule was the winner, hands down.

The 4x4 schedule—sometimes referred to as the immersion model, intensive mode, four-block, or semester block—divides the school day into four 90-minute blocks instead of the usual six or seven 50-minute periods in a traditional schedule. Students complete a "year-long" course, like first-year French, in 18, instead of the typical 36, weeks.

The idea, under the block schedule, is that teachers see roughly half the number of students they used to see at any one time, and students are enrolled in fewer courses at a time. Neither the teachers or the students are "getting off easy," though: By the end of the school year, students on a 4x4 schedule have taken more courses, and their teachers have taught more students in more courses.

Ninety-six percent of the Wasson staff voted in favor of making the change for fall of 1990. Even foot-draggers like me were eager to give 4x4 block scheduling a try.

"If we wanted the community to support block scheduling, we know we had to accommodate the needs of Advanced Placement (AP) courses."

Facing Our Fears

Teachers were naturally nervous about long blocks of instructional time and the changes in instructional strategies that would be required of us. The district gave us curriculum-writing time that summer before implementing the block, but it wasn't much help. We didn't know anything, really, about block scheduling, and it would have been nice to have other teachers—no administrators, college professors, folks from the state department of education, or consultants—tell us what to expect. We wanted to hear someone say, "This is great, you'll be fine, you'll like the longer blocks."

But there just weren't any experts on block scheduling five years ago, and it soon became clear that we would have to be our own experts. Someone finally reminded us that most of us had been teaching between 20 and 25 years; surely we know as much as anyone, at that time, about the problems and possibilities in making such a dramatic change.

In the foreign language department, each of us went home to write a 90-minute lesson plan for a sample lesson. Then we met a week later and discussed our plans together. That sample lesson-planning session gave us confidence—"Hey, we can do this; it's no big deal!"

If we wanted the community to support block scheduling, we knew we had to accommodate the needs of Advanced Placement (AP) courses. The AP teachers naturally worried about taking a 36-week AP course, which met 50 minutes a day, and replacing it with an 18-week block of classes. (As it was, our AP classes often scheduled informal weekend and evening classes before the exams in May, because there never seemed to be enough time to prepare kids adequately.) The AP teachers also worried about the timing of the AP test: The kids in the fall AP classes would finish the course four months before the exam, and the kids in the spring classes would face their AP exams two or three weeks before the end of the course.

Our solution was to schedule all AP classes for three nine-week terms. Students get the same credit as before, but the class lasts for the equivalent of three semesters instead of two. (The students take a variety of nine-week electives—which used to be semester-long courses—during the first term.) With that added time, our AP students are doing much better, as you would expect. Before the block, an average of 26 percent scored 4s and 5s on the AP exams; in the past four years, that percentage has increased to 37 percent.

Going on the Block

That first semester on the block was a difficult time, filled with a seemingly endless array of new challenges, new problems to solve, new things to learn. Our computerized attendance system didn't "understand" our new schedule, and—until someone tweaked it—many creative students found they could skip classes without being caught. Classes were larger than expected at first because the school enrolled 250 extra kids that fall, and it took the district several weeks to assign new teachers. Teachers had trouble pacing their classes to the new 90-minute schedule. (I went through a week's worth of lesson plans in my first session; another teacher found he'd seriously overestimated what could be accomplished in the longer class periods.)

And we all felt enormous pressure to make this experiment work. (The screws tightened early: One visitor to our school asked—in October—how this new schedule would affect our AP scores.)

The beginning of the second semester was like September all over again, only the staff was already tired. We hadn't just returned from three months off, yet it felt as though we were starting a completely new school year. But this time we knew what we were doing, so the second semester went much more smoothly. We began to see major changes throughout the school. Teaching styles changed as our teachers moved away from the "sage on the stage" role and encouraged more student involvement and student-directed learning. Instead of just lecturing, teachers started guiding kids in cooperative learning, critical thinking, and problem solving. We developed new interdisciplinary and team-taught classes that stressed the connections between separate subjects. When students saw the relationships between subjects, learning began to make more sense. As a result, more kids "bought into" the idea of learning.

Our schedule allows a 15-minute "passing period" between blocks A and B in the morning, a single 50-minute lunch for all 1,500 students, and a 10-minute passing period between blocks C and D in the afternoon. We've kept our open campus at lunch, which allows many students to head home or to fast-food places.

The long lunch block is now used for clubs and other activities, so students who take the bus to school and those who have after-school jobs can participate. Staff members also enjoy the collegial atmosphere of eating together, planning, or attending departmental or committee meetings—all without having to stay after school.

We had initially voted for a three-year commitment to the new schedule, but that third year came and went without a single staff member remembering we were supposed to vote to continue. Obviously, this system was allowing us to do our jobs better.

"In the five years that we've been on the block schedule, we've seen an increase in the average daily attendance rate."

Measuring the Results

In the five years that we've been on the block schedule, we've seen an increase in the average daily attendance rate from 91.7 percent to 93.9 percent and an increase in the percentage of students on the honor roll from 20.8 percent to 26.5 percent. The number of credits students earned jumped from an average of 4.8 Carnegie units to 5.8 Carnegie units. (At one point, we worried that everyone might graduate early, leaving us with no senior class, but that hasn't happened.) Class size dropped an average of three students per class, and the average number of students a teacher taught in a semester was cut in half.

Our failure rate is down, and our college enrollment rate is up. In 1990, 31 percent of our students had failed at least one class, and 40.4 percent of our graduating seniors enrolled in four-year colleges and universities. In the first year under the block schedule, the failure rate dropped to 22 percent; the five-year average has been around 25 percent. And 50.4 percent of our graduating seniors now enroll in a four-year college or university. (Again, this figure represents an average over the last five years.)

The picture for standardized tests is a bit more complicated. On average, only about 78 students have taken the SAT each year over the past five years. Their average SAT verbal score has dropped from 455 to 428, and their average math score is down from 493 to 482. More than twice as many kids take the ACT, though, and their average verbal score is up, from 19.8 to 20.2. Their average ACT math score moved from 20.1 to 20.0.

Although statistics show some aspects of what has happened in our school, it's silly to consider these data without knowing what else has changed at Wasson in the past five years. One year after starting the block, the district implemented an International Baccalaureate program at another high school that drew away many of our highest achievers, especially in math and science. Two years ago Wasson went from being a three-year high school with 980 students to a four-year school with 1,600 students: We've added 20 new staff members and 600 ninth-graders.

In the past five years, too, our minority population has increased from 22 percent to 34 percent. Two of our sister high schools draw 5 percent and 11 percent of their population from low-income families; Wasson draws 26 percent. During most of this time, too, our school district has been in a budget crisis. The Colorado Legislature changed Colorado Springs' funding category, forcing the schools to accept significant reductions in budget and staffing. At one point, our school year was reduced from 182 days to 162 days. (We're back up to 178 now.)

With so many factors at work here, it's hard to tell what caused what. But we have to consider the results that can't be graphed or measured. We have a calmer and quieter school than we had before. The hectic pace has slowed down a notch or two, and stress levels have been reduced for staff and students alike. We've never been able to graph the change in "smiles per hundred students," but if we could, I know we'd see a sizable increase. The block schedule has changed more than the timing of our bells; it has changed the entire culture of our school.