Block Schedule Harmful, Not Helpful

The district’s recent decision to implement block scheduling next year is intended to make school more efficient, reduce wasted time, and improve the quality of learning for students. After the recent block “practice week”, feedback from the students is supposedly being taken into consideration in order to smooth out any issues with the proposed schedule.

However, the fundamental assertion that this will provide a net benefit to students is false. The block schedule instead makes for a less engaging classroom, makes absences more detrimental, and starves students and staff with an excruciatingly late lunch period.

We must first acknowledge how the district’s decision and the test week came to be. The district, largely without the input of the student body, created a schedule that is well intentioned but ultimately improper. The district waited until after the school board voted to approve block scheduling to solicit student input. The process has been far from transparent.  The implementation has been autocratic.

For such a monumental change, all students should have been surveyed about their interest in a block schedule in advance of its approval and implementation.

Block scheduling compresses 2 days of learning into the span of a 90 minute period, with a supposed “breaks” or “transitions” within a single class period. Advocates say that fewer periods in a day allows for fewer passing periods and less wasted time.  This is nonsense.  In the absence of the practical necessity to move from class to class more often, the time spent on superficial transitions within the single classroom is still “wasted” time.

Block scheduling also more heavily penalizes students forced to miss days of school for sports, field trips and academic activities, and emergencies. A student who misses a day of school in the block format, while they may have the same amount of work to make up as they would under a traditional schedule, is still missing the equivalent of 2 days of instructional time for a particular course. This ultimately decreases the quality of their education.

Furthermore, a study titled “The Impact of Block Scheduling on Student Achievement, Attendance, and Discipline at the High School Level” by Charles William Jr., studying Florida schools, has found that attendance actually declines under a block system.

This same study also found that math scores for standardized testing decreased with the implementation of block scheduling.

Dr. Nessa Sasser of the Seattle PI, in an article titled “Block v. Traditional Scheduling,” found that students are less engaged and motivated under a system of block scheduling than under a traditional model of scheduling. All classes reliant on constant reinforcement of skills and ideas, especially in the language departments and mathematics, will be negatively impacted by this system.

I have experienced block scheduling first hand as a student at Marshall High School in Virginia, which maintained a block schedule for the duration of my time there. I have experienced the lack of focus and the apathy produced by a system that crams two days of learning into a 90 minute period. I have felt the frustration of having to coordinate retakes, missed work, and absences in the uncompromising and inflexible structure of block scheduling.

Unfortunately, no one asked me, or hardly any but a small handful of student representatives, before pushing this agenda through the school board.  For a district that claims it is making changes with students’ best interests in mind, they should consider showing that they actually value students’ interests by asking students what they are.