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Essay on Block Schedule
Block scheduling is a scheduling idea that is gaining some popularity in public schools today. However, it is not a new idea. Block scheduling has been in use in many in public schools in USA since the middle 1970's. There are two main families of block scheduling, each of which uses class periods of 80-90 minutes instead of the usual 45-50 minutes. The first variety of block scheduling is the alternating day, full-year schedule, in which students attend a given class every other day throughout the full school year.
In the semester type of block scheduling, students attend a given class every day for half of the year, at which time the class is complete.
There are several potential benefits and drawbacks to block scheduling. The proponents of block scheduling emphasize the opportunity to take more classes throughout the course of a year (typically 8 in block scheduling versus 7 in a traditional schedule), and the opportunity to conduct more in-depth learning activities during the longer class periods. Additionally, in subjective analyses of teachers' experience with block scheduling, there has been an observed increase in students' morale and engagement in learning activities, and a decrease in student discipline problems and drop-out rates. One other small gain is the decrease in required administrative time (e.g. taking attendance) associated with longer class periods.
The 1994 report of the National Education Commission on Time and Learning say that schools will have a design flaw as long as their organization is based on the assumption that all students can learn on the same schedule. In addition, since most disciplinary problems occur during scheduled transitions, the more transitions, the more problems. In our district, the principal states this as the number one discipline problem in school – during passing times. And a great deal of time is lost in simply starting and ending so many classes in a day...........
