After an extremely frustrating experience attempting to help my child complete her math homework, I decided to research block scheduling or more commonly referred to as semestering. I was not semestered in high school and was able to take up to 8 subjects throughout the school year. The choice for most schools to move towards semestering, where students take four, 75 minutes blocks for the first semester followed by another four, 75 minutes blocks by the second semester, was implement in 1986.
The move to the semestered secondary school model worries my greatly. My greatest subject concern lies with Mathematics. I feel that the Ontario Curriculum is already watered down significantly with Ontario’s move have to four secondary school years opposed to the previous OAC five secondary school structure.
Supporters of Block Scheduling claim that students get better grades, there are fewer failures, less time lost between classes, less discipline problems, less stress and variety in extended classrooms. The opposite of this is actually the reality.
Students get better grades
“GPA’s are not a reliable indicator of achievement since each school or individual teacher controls the outcome of any given test.”1 It has been proven that semestered students consistently fare poorer in standardized testing that students participating in a traditionally all-year model.
Lower Student Failure Rate
In the block scheduling model, students should be covering twice as much material as they do in one semester in the traditional, full year model. If this is the case, the students should be assigned twice as much homework each day than the year-long student. If they are not doing twice as much homework (of which I am pretty certain of), either the standards are being lowered or work which was traditionally assigned to do at home is being completed during class time. Either way, the students are not getting the full curriculum they received in full-year scheduling.
Less lost time between classes
Students need a break from class time to refresh. They no longer get this with 75 minute courses. Any benefit gained from loss class time is loss due to inattention, boredom, etc.
Less discipline problems
This may hold true, but are we willing to sell our children’s education over decreased discipline. Students who misbehave, will misbehave and students who don’t, won’t. Also students do need a certain amount of socialization which is already limited.
Less Stress
Also may be true, but are you willing to trade stress for academic cost?
The biggest problem I find with Block Scheduling is one of retention. Since a student can take mathematics in first semester of one grade, he/she may not take this subject again until the second semester of the next year. Thus, it may be a full year since the student has been exposed to mathematics. I firmly believe that math has to be continually practiced in order to become proficient and gain a full understanding of the material. Since students do forget some of what was covered in the past math course taken, review is necessary. Therefore, my high school freshmen daughter will receive review of the last material covered leaving less time in the semester to move onto new subject material. Dr. David J Bateson’s, (University of British Columba) study of 30,000 grade 10 students implies “first semester students had forgotten a significant amount of class material by the time they took the test at the end of the year, contrary to the popular myth that retention is not a problem.”2
I also feel that math needs time to take hold in order to gain full understanding of a mathematical concept. Remember the light bulb turning on feeling of understanding and successfully solving a mathematical problem. Math needs to be taught in small increments with time to practice each step between. “The students just do not have the same kind of gestation period to let things percolate and let them sort of fit together on their own. It is much more forced and I think they believe on faith much more than because they know it to be true.”3
The Raphael study of Mathematics appeared in the Canadian Journal of Education, 1986 authored by Drs. Dennis Raphael, Merlin W. Wahlstrom and L.D. Mclean. The article “Debunking the Semestering Myth” showed that students participating in the year-long class system scored higher on average than the students who were semestered. They found that “academic achievement was significantly lower under block scheduling and found either adverse effects or no benefit in students' attitudes about mathematics (contrary to the common claim that block scheduling improves attitudinal scores). Further, he states “block scheduling detrimental to student achievement4.
This same study also supported the belief that students enrolled in full-year math courses scored higher than their counterparts. “Students were tested on several different mathematical areas: number systems, algebraic computation and skills, equations and inequalities, analytical geometry, trigonometry, function, probability and statistics. In every area, the year-long class average scores are higher than the semester-long class average scores, whether math is there are of specialization or not.” 5
I believe that we as parents or educators have a duty to express our concerns to the Ontario Ministry of Education, the School Boards and the schools themselves. Our students deserve better.
1 Bennett, Karen J. “BLOCK SCHEDULING: With a Mathematics Perspective”, CTER Program at University of Illinois (online), http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/bennett/block_scheduling.htm
2 Bateson, David J. “Science Achievement in Semester and All-year Courses,” Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 27(3): 233-240 (1990)].
3 Lyngard, Lynn. “Research in Ontario Secondary Schools, Scheduling and the New Ontario Curriculum: Teachers’ Perceptions”, Vol.9, No.2, http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/field-centres/TVC/RossReports/vol9no2.htm, [2005]
4 Raphael, Dennis, Wahlstrom, Merlin W., McLean, L.D., “Debunking the Semestering Myth”, Canadian Journal of Education, 11(1): 36 – 52, [1986].
5 Bennett, Karen J. “BLOCK SCHEDULING: With a Mathematics Perspective”, CTER Program at University of Illinois (online), http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/bennett/block_scheduling.htm
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