<p>There is a big ‘learning curve’ for both teachers and students when making the switch to block. Others have mentioned that it’s crucial for the school to train its teachers, although I think more and more teacher prep programs are training the young, new teachers so they are more prepared to teach under the block system than the veterans. My big issue is that some students have a hard time staying focused for 90 minutes–LOTS of those kids in public schools. The gifted child is more likely to have the ability to stay focused, but that is not exclusively true. I remember dying in some of my very dry tuesday/thursday classes as an undergrad, due to the longer classes. I began to learn which classes to schedule on a MWF rotation because the shorter classes were more palatable . I’m just not cut out for staying focused for that length of time. A good block teacher will have kids engaged in activity, up/moving around so they aren’t nodding off! Lectures are not the way to go in a block program.</p>
<p>I am in absolute agreement with the comments written by Quaere in Post #3 above. In my limited experience with block scheduling at the high school level, it seemed to help the less motivated and less industrious students as the teachers allowed time to do the homework assignments during the last portion of classtime. This also enabled students to receive help from the teacher on homework assignments. Really helped the football players in class who often were too tired to do homework at home after football practice; the team actually won a couple state championships.</p>
<p>Our HS has block scheduling-A day and B day-4 classes a day, each class every other day. All the kids love it. Parents love it. Science teachers love it because labs can be longer/more effecient. About the only teachers who don’t love it are the foreign language teachers who would prefer to see the kids every day. It is is more expensive for the district, because teachers still get one planning period per day, so they teach 6 out of 8 periods instead of 7 out of 8.</p>
<p>My son is in 5 AP classes and they still have to push to get through the material. I will say that when my kids have had “regular” required courses (e.g. Health) the teacher does allow time to do homework in class. But I don’t think anyone is complaining.</p>
<p>DS1’s school has a schedule similar to missypie’s HS. DS2 has a traditional 7-period schedule. We all prefer the block schedule. Makes it easier to balance extracurricular activities, one can get HW help/clarification if needed, and for DS1, the extended periods were great for labs, class discussion, etc. I will admit that he liked having math class every day, however (some classes in his school’s block schedule meet daily to accommodate for multiple lunch periods, etc.).</p>
<p>There is a problem with midyear transfers in and out of 4x4 block schools.</p>
<p>My D attended a 4x4 block school. My S is attending a traditional 7 period day. It’s the right schedule for each of them.</p>
<p>We have the 4x4 block. I think it makes good teachers better and bad teachers worse. You can have fabulous class discussions that don’t have to end, and lazy teachers who can’t keep up. My daughter has a teacher now who just couldn’t make it to the end of the curriculum and assigned the class to each research a topic and present, in five minutes, so they could be done before exams. Unfortunately that’s an AP class that is now not meeting again before the exam in May. It’s especially challenging for teachers who are also athletic coaches.</p>
<p>On the other hand, my daughter has had some great teachers who keep to a very precise schedule while offering deeper classroom experiences. It’s much easier to run a thorough spirited debate in a history class with 90 minutes instead of 40, or for a science teacher to have flexibility with labs. I thought foreign language would be a big issue but it hasn’t turned out to be. Many kids choose to do their language sequence back to back anyway. Math for the non-mathy kids can be a challenge when they’re away from it for 8 months.</p>
<p>Our science APs run the full course of the year. I’m not sure if admissions people look at that as being less rigorous. If you start school after Labor Day it’s a challenge to be done by the first week in May for APs with the non-block schedule. With block you’re either challenged with ending or starting on Feb. 1, so our school went to full year on what they considered the more challenging APs. It does mean it’s very hard to take more than one science AP.</p>
<p>The biggest benefit I think is that it decreases time wasted changing classes and settling in to the next one. There’s a lot less hallway drama going on. If given the choice I’d vote to keep it.</p>
<p>We live within a fairly homogeneous school district which has several high schools. All the high schools are similar in size and all but one of the schools has block scheduling. The high school that has retained the traditional schedule is the school which offers the most honor and AP classes and consistently measures the highest in comparison by most standards (state testing scores, SAT/ACT scores, AP scores, graduation rates, percentage of students pursuing undergraduate degrees are the ones that come to mind.) It is not the high school in the wealthiest area. The school district has pushed to convert this school to block scheduling, but so far the teachers, parents and students have resisted.</p>
<p>I can’t beleive you are going to block! Most districts are dropping it because it costs so much more money!</p>
<p>As a math tutor, I don’t like it if kids take math for the first half of a block-scheduled year and then do no math whatsoever until September.</p>
<p>Greta, to what do you attribute the better performance of the non-block school - regular schedule, more teacher empowerment (in that they’ve resisted it this long), ??</p>
<p>Treetopleaf,</p>
<p>I’m not Greta, but let me offer one suggestion, based on the experience of having one child in a traditional public and one in an A/B block schedule school. (Same town, both publics)</p>
<p>Both of my kids, as 10th graders, took a combined world history and English class. This class consists of AP World History and Honors English, taught as a team-taught class. It is called World Studies; the curriculum at both schools is the same for this course. </p>
<p>In the traditional schedule, it is taught as back to back 50 minute classes and includes the 4 minute “in between” time, 5 days a week. </p>
<p>At the block schedule school, it is taught as a 90-minute class, 5 days a week.</p>
<p>Total in-class time for traditional = 520 minutes per week.</p>
<p>Total in-class time for block = 450 minutes per week.</p>
<p>There is less in-class time for any class under the block schedule.</p>
<p>Does it matter? It isn’t proof, but the AP scores are better at the traditional school.</p>
<p>Greta we have the EXACT same issue in our district with 17 public high schools and the 4 x 4 block!!</p>
<p>I wonder if we are in the same district?</p>
<p>The ONE high school that is not on the 4 x 4 block is the one that offers 27 APs has over 2500+ students in AP classes and has the highest SAT/ACT and APs scores than the other 16 high schools in the same public district.</p>
<p>It is one of 3 magnets with an extremely small base population and everyone else is there because of the “magnet” status. High school is also ranked highly (national) where the other 16 are not, also the largest high school but not by much.</p>
<p>Needless to say my kiddos did NOT attend said high school since it is near impossible to get into and is not accessible from our neighborhood, at least an hour drive time away. This high school has successfully resisted the mandatory 4 x 4 block that all other high schools are on.</p>
<p>Kat</p>
<p>ps. when son graduated recently he was the only one in his high school (1 of the 16, not magnet) to take the AP Calc BC, AP Physics, AP Span and AP Econ exam…none of the other seniors could swing the test in May since they started class in late Jan. 3 months and a few days wasn’t enough time for them all to prepare adequately</p>
<p>I had two do the 4X4 block. The youngest is set to start high school next fall. I am pretty sure she will attend one of the other two high schools on a traditional schedule.
The school swears by the block but I do think depending on the teacher the kids do less work. My LD son found the block easy to manage. My oldest was Gate and Honors and found the block to her liking as well. As a parent I think she might have been better served in a traditional schedule.
We are lucky we have choices.</p>
<p>Our sister high school did block scheduling, but my high school did not. They decided to experiment with it over two years. I had freshman year blocked Biology and English, and sophomore year, I had blocked gym/health and Advanced Algebra.
I know for sure with Advanced Algebra we covered less material than the regular course.
The teachers hated it. When they surveyed them at the end of sophomore year, the results were very clear, they did not want it. The students said it wasn’t good to have some sections blocked and some regular. In the end, it was decided, if they truly wanted to do it, they would have to include all classes. However, no one wanted the block schedule, and so, it died.</p>
<p>
So you have twice as much time in AP science classes as any other class? </p>
<p>Let’s face it, any school starting after Labor Day has a challenge to be done by the first week in May for AP tests. The system greatly favors those states/districts which start school in August. Why, some states start school in early August, so they have a full month more instructional time before the AP tests.</p>
<p>Deja, I brought up that very issue with one of the dunces in our Texas legislature who championed the tourism’s industry’s move to make the school start date later. (We aren’t after Labor Day, but we are now two weeks later than before.) Our brilliant Texas legislature didn’t seem to have given a second’s thought to the dates of the AP exams.</p>
<p>Our district starts after labor day, last year the last day of school was June 22nd</p>
<p>D is taking an AP AmGov class spring semester- as well as AP lit- I think it will be a problem- as she won’t have much time to prepare- and frankly she needs all the support for academics that she can get</p>
<p>
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<p>Yes, they run as two semester classes on the 4x4 block. They start in September and go to June, with the 6 weeks of class time after AP tests used to delve into related topics which aren’t a focus of the AP exam. Math actually does the same thing, with AB in the fall and BC in the spring. This provides for extra class time compared with the traditional schedule but it does mean fewer AP units at graduation. This is a smaller, somewhat disadvanteged urban high school with a small number of kids doing APs. Scheduling is tough, there is only one AP section offered per course, and it’s rare to take more than four AP courses in total. (counting courses as classes which end in an AP test, not number of semesters)</p>
<p>OP reporting back here - school seems to have dropped the idea of instituting block scheduling. Gotta say I’m relieved.</p>
<p>Lemme offer my two cents as a student on Block Schedule.</p>
<p>I went to both Elementary and middle schools with traditional scheduling. On entering high school, however, I chose a school with 4 x 4 block. I LOVE IT. It’s so much less-stressful, knowing that you have two days to do each homework assignment. You get to do way more in class, and it’s gotten to the point where our teachers can’t imagine going back to a traditional schedule.</p>
<p>Last year they tried to put us on this wacko schedule where every Monday we had each class except for Period 7, then Tuesday and Thursday we had odd classes and Wednesday and Friday we had even classes. It was AWFUL. Mondays were stressful and the teachers decided that the only worthwhile thing to do was give tests/quizzes since we only had 50 minutes and the teachers are used to planning lessons for 90. </p>
<p>I LOOOOOOVE block scheduling. I can’t imagine going back to traditional.</p>
<p>As for the whole period not being used…maybe that’s how it is some places, but in my school district it’s the opposite. All but one school are on block schedule, and all the teachers use it to full advantage. Now there are, of course, the rare days where we get done with lessons early and the teacher will give us the rest of the period to do homework or even just chatter with our friends. But that’s RARE, and when it does happen it’s normally only 5-10 minutes at the end of the period.</p>