Get rid of boredom

Engagement

“We have entered a new era in teaching,” Dr. Jan Borelli, celebrated principal and blogger writes. “We now have the capability to know what the students do or do not know, and we now have the capability to reach most of the children if we use data to guide our instruction.”[1] Following privatization, schools will find it necessary to implement new organizational structures to meet the needs of each student—students needing less instruction offered the opportunity to pursue new endeavors, where those who need it receive all the time necessary.

Harnessing real data

8.1 The classroom is indeed a silent domain —every effort must be made to allow teachers to obtain a real-time sense of their student’s understanding so that they can effectively steer the nature of their lessons without fear of surprise on the next examination. Implementing a wireless response system for use throughout a lesson is a key avenue—soon a real answer to “Did you all understand?” will become apparent.
8.2 An additional area of opportunity for educators will be actively using pre-tests to determine a student’s course structure.

Flattening out

8.3 One change in structure, based loosely upon a block scheduling format, will be the flexibility of course length and depth based on demonstrated student ability—giving students an opportunity to pursue multiple courses in one year.
8.4 This horizontal-block format would be as follows: a student who has five periods a day will have ten blocks per year—each block corresponding with a series of weeks, per course. The system will be highly dependent on the implementation of pretests—likely during next year’s planning in the previous school year.

For example, a student may begin the year with daily courses in geometry, biology, English, and world history. Having mastered ninety-percent in the geometry pretest, he will take geometry for only one block— three to four weeks. At this time he will take the national (and course, if necessary) exam for geometry. If he passes the examination, he will then fill the next nine blocks with as many courses as necessary.

8.5 Each course would reset every one or two blocks for at least one class depending on demand. Some scheduling conflicts would cause the student to pursue one-block enrichment courses until new courses became available.

Change it up

8.6 Some administrators may implement systems of regular classroom reorganization— at two to three times a year, teachers, in coordination with administrators and counselors, would reorganize their master schedules for each student. Pupils who are demonstrating exceptional competency in one class may be bumped up to provide a further challenge; likewise, students who are performing poorly may have the nature of their course changed. This will enable teachers to ensure that they can best tailor their lesson plans to meet the needs of a class without wide disparities in student ability, effort, and potential that become apparent throughout a school year.

This format can begin to address the issues that surround tracking, or enrolling students into distinct “ability-based” groups. Tracking, Jeannie S. Oakes writes, has resulted in “racially disproportionate” enrollments, whose inconsistent and unduly subjective criteria causes “considerable harm” by “inferior opportunities to learn” and resulting lower achievement.[2]

Whereas Ms. Oakes would prefer the abandonment of “discriminatory” tracking to embrace heterogeneous learning environments, Kansas argues that meritocratic schooling depends upon calibrating the intensity of expectations to demonstrated ability. Kansas agrees in full that containment in the name of tracking is scandalously inhibitive. Ms. Oakes’ passion for heterogeneous classes is far more skeptical. An effective education focuses on the individual, not the group. Dynamic tracks offer students an intensive study consistent with their needs – advanced mathematics and basic history should not be mutually exclusive. Even more critical are the necessity for ‘ramps’ that challenge students to extend beyond their ranks – if and when appropriate to the individual student.

Arbitrary mainstreaming can compromise an effective classroom environment, to a degree indistinguishable from a crippling tiered tracking system.[3] This paper and Ms. Oakes share a common ideal in manifesting the ultimate realization of a homogenous class of basic competencies (mastery of the societal bases: basic literacy and mathematics, which is not yet attained) pursuing heterogeneous ends. “Don’t bother to just be better than your contemporaries or predecessors,” William Faulkner wrote. “Try to be better than yourself.”

The one-year class

8.7 This form of block scheduling will be a boon for those who excel—it would not be impossible for a student under such a structure to graduate within one year. Some may pursue opportunities with community colleges or through partnerships with universities, students may participate in distance digital learning programs at school, free or highly subsidized.

This flexibility in incorporating acceleration policies correlates strongly with the report A Nation Deceived, which concludes that the American public education system is ignoring excellence. The report argues that “students are ready for much more challenge than the system provides.” [4] This “lock-step” approach radically hinders development, resulting in boredom. The report highlights that acceleration is the “most effective” curriculum intervention for gifted children, acceleration offers long-term academic and social effects, and is virtually free of cost. The opportunity proposed in this paper is paced, whereas the report recommends above-level testing. Such testing and acceleration would likely be incorporated in the primary years. This paper’s horizontal block format enables both the report’s “grade-based” and “subject-based” acceleration, which can either shorten the length of time enrolled or advance the content level for particular subjects.

The opposite, classes that “stretch into five, six, even seven” years is just as possible in the interest of limiting dropouts.[5]

[1] Dr. Jan’s Blogging Life: Experts From a School Reformer. Jan G. Borelli. The School Administrator. May 2006. http://www.drjansblog.typepad.com/dr_jans_blog/files/aasa_pub_blog.pdf.
[2] Limiting Students’ School Success and Life Chances: The Impact of Tracking. Jeannie S. Oakes. Contemporary Issues in Curriculum. Third Edition 2003. Page 21.
[3] ‘Mainstreaming’ Trend Tests Classroom Goals. John Hechinger. The Wall Street Journal. 25 June 2007.
[4] A Nation Deceived. Nicholas Colangelo, Ph.D., Susan G. Assouline, Ph.D., Miraca U.M. Gross, Ph.D. The Connie Belin & Jacqueline N. Blank International Center for Gifted Education and Talent Development. October 2004.
[5] More Students Finish School, Given the Time. Jennifer Medina. The New York Times. 21 August 2007.