School Scheduling and Program Design

Many scheduling formulas have been tried in schools, and many more will be tried in the future. Are we truly searching for a "best" option, and how will we know when we've found it? At least we have learned that some formats are much better than others. Dewey's Activity Curriculum school was thought to be wonderfully child centered and engaging, but students arrived at high school with glaring subject matter deficiencies. The Open School, where interior walls were removed in favor of a multi-age, multi-teacher classroom, turned out to be noisy chaos that created high anxiety and disappointing performance. Thus, we have made progress towards better options.

However, most of our public high school design was originally laid out in 1906 and 1959. In 1906, Carnegie units were developed: the idea that a student had to pass (then) 16 of credits in math, English, science, etc. in order to graduate. This standardized college admissions criteria. Under the Carnegie system, classes were to meet 5 days a week for a minimum of 45 minutes each time, for a total of 120 hours of instruction per subject per year. Sounds very much like the comprehensive high school schedules of today. James Bryant Conant, chemist, author, and President of Harvard, was instrumental in creating and reinforcing the high school system and college entrance system as we know it today. His educational policy work lead to the creation and widespread use of the SAT for college admissions, he is credited for moving Harvard's curriculum away from the classics and towards modernity, and he wrote down his recommendations for the high school curriculum in a 1959 report, among other reports he made on similar subjects. A cursory reading of his report will make it seem as if it were written last week, not almost 60 years ago. "4 years of English, 3-4 years of social studies, a senior course in American problems or American government..." could have been taken out of most high school course catalogs today.

Under the heading "Ability Grouping", Conant writes, "In the required subjects and those elected by students with a wide range of ability, the students should be grouped according to ability, subject by subject... This type of grouping is not to be confused with across-the-board grouping according to which a given student is placed in a particular section in all courses..." All though ability grouping is seen as somewhat taboo today in that it can deny students access to varied educational opportunities and constrain their achievement and self-esteem, we can't deny that it still happens. What does ability grouping look like in today's average public high school? Students are allowed to group themselves by a large extent. Students with average scores have a choice: shall they sign up for honors courses or standard courses during their freshmen year? In schools where these freshmen courses have no entrance testing or criteria, this is frequently the case. Once a student is enrolled in his or her first standard course, it is difficult if not impossible to change. Upper level courses may have lower level honors courses as prerequisites. Even worse, students who go from standard foreign language to honors foreign language may find they have gaps in their content knowledge.

Even though standard and honors courses may not be intended to be ability grouped, they end up being that way. Students are tracked into certain academic and social expectations that are attached to the "standard" and "honors" label. Many of them choose these courses though, so a students presence in an honors or a standard course is not necessarily representative of their intellectual ability. Rather, it is usually a indication as to their social status in the community at large, their SES, and their achievement motivation.

I believe we should take a hard look at the tracking practices in modern high schools and try to find better ways of grouping students. There is no need for this to be thought of as institutionalized and characteristic of the high school. We should always be willing to look at structures that we have taken forgranted and be willing to challenge them and experiment with newer, perhaps better options.