Block Scheduling In Education

In recent years many people have voiced their concern about an apparent decline in American students’ achievements. This has become a reoccurring belief for many teachers, parents, and school districts throughout the United States. As a result, many states have begun to increase the amount of credits necessary to fulfill graduation requirements in hope to enhance education and make American students more globally competitive.

As many districts have found, it is not feasible to add more subjects to the already demanding six or seven period days. The problem in doing so is that there is limited time for electives. Administrators began to find that adding classes only took away time from other parts of the curriculum that were previously established.

Block scheduling only adds to the already high level of stress these students will face. In today’s world, under diverse economic conditions, it normal seeing families move with children already in high school. If a family is new to the area with a child in tenth grade, there is a good chance that the student is transferring into a school where block scheduling is a new experience for them. Under block scheduling a student would be taking four subjects at a time and covering the material at twice the speed of classes in a normal 6-8 class day. If a student does not adjust immediately to this change he/she could fall behind in all of their classes. A student moving in one or two months after the academic year has begun will be close to two months behind from the rest of his or her class. Students in this situation will find the need to hired a tutor. For others this could mean having to take non-sequential classes for the rest of semester. In this case students are often in classes repeating material they had taken at other schools before they transferred until it gets to a point where they catch up. Many families have chosen to go with a private school for the duration of the year until the start of the new year. Parents could then enroll them into a district that does block scheduling. This will always be an unexpected expense for families, not to

Have you ever sat in class and not have a clue about what was going on? Most likely it was because something else was on your mind or you just were not having the best day. The classroom was always in a traditional teaching style though, which is a regular 49-minute class. But, in reality teachers struggle keeping the attention their students for 49 minutes. Even news programs such as "60 minutes" divide their hourly show into three 20-minute presentations to retain audience attention (Polos, 1969). It has been argued further that if television can not sustain a longer format, then it is ridiculous to expect teachers and students to be able to. Special education is yet another concern. It is the law that schools are to provide education to students in the least restrictive environment. Students with special needs are often known to mainstreamed into regular classrooms for many parts of the day. Most school districts face the problem of limited resources for meeting the needs of these children in a traditional setting. With this in mind, the needs of special education students will be far from met with such intense