The Student Driven Schedule: A Closer Look

On March 3, 2001 the King County Journal ran the op-ed column below. I wrote it out of frustration with the “semesterization” of my own high school’s schedule. It was another top down process unilaterally imposed by administration. There was no faculty input. The process just “evolved” over the course of three or four years. In department meetings whenever I questioned why yearlong classes in English, social studies, math, and science had more and more students transferring to different teachers at semester, I was invariably told it was an administrative scheduling concern. In other words, just shut up and do what you’re told. I saw no academic justification for such a policy shift. No school official ever offered me one, so I wrote.

FAS

The Student Driven Schedule: A Closer Look

Most parents who send their teenagers to a public high school assume the school will focus on academics. Thank goodness that assumption is true in most cases. But in at least one area high school, administrators actually boast their schedule is "student driven." Like the omni-impotent phrase "meeting kids’ needs," "student driven" says to parents "we care" until they get the real translation. "Student driven" is edu-speak for "elective focused."

The "student driven" schedule is a fairy godmother granting wishes. Teenagers get the electives they want BEFORE the academic classes they need. The process placates the restless and the unmotivated but penalizes the conscientious and the college bound. In short, scheduling priorities are reversed. Adolescent choices are reshaping required courses.

Single-semester electives get top priority. Yearlong academic classes scrape bottom. Language arts, the only four-year requirement in high school, is scheduled dead last. Coincidentally, English was also the last required class to coordinate its curriculum by semester or "semesterize." Why abandon the traditional year of algebra, biology, and American history?  Whose interests are best served by doing so?

The curriculum for required academic subjects is supposed to be a year’s course of study. The student catalog says so. Parents and students expect an entire year with the same teacher. Yet to facilitate scheduling, every curriculum has now been "semesterized." That may sound reasonable, even desirable until one factors in academic continuity. When half the student body arbitrarily changes teachers each semester, continuity gets crucified. "Semesterizing" the schedule is educational blasphemy.

School leaders justify their schedule with stats on every potential conflict from overcrowding to planning period preferences. For administrators expedience trumps academic continuity. Teachers have no say in scheduling priorities, but, as always, teachers must cope with the consequences.  The "elective focused" schedule and the division of yearlong classes into semesters were unilateral administrative dictates. So what’s wrong with these policies?

The big shift at semester wastes curriculum time. Teachers must re-establish classroom expectations with every new student. Newcomers must re-acclimate. Teacher-student rapport and trust start from scratch. Academic procedures already engrained in first semester students need repeating for untrained transfers. School begins all over again. The process takes weeks—wasted weeks.

The semester swap undermines the classroom authority of every teacher involved. With each new cast of characters, teachers face behavior problems and territorial challenges. It takes time to set boundaries. It takes time to enforce them consistently. The school year has no time to spare. The WASL (our state-mandated test) looms.

Semester splits are hardest on new teachers. They need YEARS of experience to build classroom confidence, efficiency, and presence. A succession of start-and-stop semesters will never suffice. Where’s the follow through? Starting over each semester doubles the stress but cuts the sense of accomplishment in half. Watch this policy push frustrated young teachers out of the profession.

Experienced teachers don’t fare much better. Veterans create a rhythm with established programs. Units pulse with common thematic accents. The first semester crescendo builds to a second semester grand finale. Vets reserve a pride-and-joy unit, their greatest passion, for June when student effort wanes. Nothing motivates like enthusiasm. Truncate that process; interrupt the crescendo, and the grand finale fizzles. Watch semester scheduling push frustrated veteran teachers out of the profession.

When the elective tail wags the academic dog, standardized test scores drop. Where’s the surprise here? What realistic adult thinks an "elective focused" schedule promotes scholarship? For many teens English class is no more important than jewelry making. If high school somehow morphed into college, most students would major in electives.

Does your high school schedule this way? If so, its educational priorities need a major overhaul. Scheduling should reflect academic importance. To that end, core classes come first. Electives ARE important but secondary. No college, no future employer cares whether a high school graduate took calligraphy or woodworking.

English, social studies, math, and science must be yearlong classes. Educational integrity demands continuity. Semester transfers in core classes should be rare, not de rigueur. When students are accountable to one teacher per subject, anonymity decreases. That makes real caring, not just lip service, possible. Subject mastery becomes an attainable long-term goal, not a fragmented, serendipitous dream.

Parents and teachers cannot afford to acquiesce. The scheduling status quo must change. Current practice sends students a clear anti-intellectual message. The school focus is social not scholastic–fun first, academics last. Student attitudes and behavior reflect the tone set by the schedule, and that tone is stridently off-key.

Principled people must speak out. The elective focused schedule has to go. Administration needs to hear the right message to re-establish the right priorities. A diploma ought to be a high school’s academic seal of approval, a guarantee its graduates are intellectually prepared for adult life. Anything less is institutionalized fraud.

P.S.  When administrators in public schools make unilateral, fundamental changes that negatively impact academics, somebody ought to hold them accountable.  

Weak administrators think happy kids make good schools. Happy kids mean happy parents. Happy parents make for good public relations. Good PR makes a principal’s job easier and more secure. In the meantime, dedicated teachers who witness the steady decline in academic focus and protest end up on the assistant principal’s troublemakers list. Ah, such is the weak, but well-established, chain of command.