Anonymous wrote:I think post pandemic, school districts around the nation are looking at how schools
functioned back in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, when educational outcomes and student health (mental and physical) metrics were much better. 45 minutes periods worked for decades, so why not now.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented student health crisis and also test scores are not improving despite the promise of scheduling changes, new technology, and other fads that have come and gone.

I wouldn't be surprised if the next topic for school reform will be introducing fresh "home cooked meals" at every school à la France, Japan, etc.

Hmm. But these countries do have block scheduling. But more breaks. It works well. There are 10 minute breaks throughout between lessons. Somehow American schools cannot handle this. They are afraid of break time.

Anonymous wrote:I think the middle schools have an anchor day and the high schools don't. I think it works better without the anchor day. That way teachers and kids get used to the longer block schedules. I see pros and cons of switching back to 45 min classes, but I think the once a week anchor day was pretty much the worst since there were so few of them so no one was used to it.

Also it is pretty rich to see school board members worried about the lack of routine with block schedules when they have constructed a school year with about a million random days off.

DHMS has mostly gotten rid of anchor days this year. I think there have only been three, and one was the first day of school. We were told both teachers and students didn't like anchor days, so they were being minimized.

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Anonymous wrote:My kid is in college now and found that the block scheduling prepared them well for the long twice a week classes. Their friends who never had block have more of an adjustment. The 50 minute 3x a week classes actually felt like breeze in college.

+1. My kids loved block scheduling too. It prepared them well for college and also helped them figure out how to manage their time regarding homework and assignments.

But it’s nothing like college. That’s a fake equivalency. College classes are not as long, you can get up and go the bathroom easily or go get a breath of fresh air, you don’t have 4 classes a day.

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Anonymous wrote:My junior regularly takes tests that are longer than 45 minutes. The one year he had math in the daily 45 minute block, the tests were spread over 2 days. Which fine, but really opens up even further opportunities for cheating which is already a problem.

For the AP classes that involve writing, it's impossible to do writing tasks as given on the AP test in 45 min. Meaning if your exam is a DBQ or LEQ, when are you ever practicing these or being tested on this? I wonder how HB handles this.

Over 45 min math test? At APS? That’s ridiculous.

Aren’t AP writing tasks not “write all this in 90 minutes in one passage”, but multiple sections? We have had APs for decades, and I’m sure it’s a solvable problem.

Comments like these are so puzzling to me. It's like the no one has homework and everyone gets an A posters. Do you even have kids in high school taking most rigorous classes?

My DS goes to a school with 45 minute schedule, and has take 5 APs and got a 1550 on SAT. But let’s be honest, when you have a kid like this you don’t hear how the sausage is made, they and the teachers make it work.

The grinder kids in these big publics take 8-12+ APs and the schools offer every single AP the College Board has. So it's a lot more classes offered for the teachers to "make it work".

I meant 5 APs this semester. Total is probably 12, again grinders don’t need handholding. They and teachers do what needs to be done.

Anonymous wrote:I just hope the review includes input from teachers who are actually living with the schedules and what they think and prefer.

+1

I'm sure APE will try to drown out voices from teachers and students. They've infested various school committees.

Anonymous wrote:I think this review is driven by the - everything is better at HB - crowd. They have 45 minute blocks daily. Nevermind plenty of us don't think everything is better at HB.

The reason HB has this schedule (8 45 minute blocks) is they have to in order for high school kids to be able to participate in sports at their home high school. It's not some educational choice. They have to build a block into the end of the school day for transportation, basically.

Anonymous wrote:My kid is in college now and found that the block scheduling prepared them well for the long twice a week classes. Their friends who never had block have more of an adjustment. The 50 minute 3x a week classes actually felt like breeze in college.

+1. My kids loved block scheduling too. It prepared them well for college and also helped them figure out how to manage their time regarding homework and assignments.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:My junior regularly takes tests that are longer than 45 minutes. The one year he had math in the daily 45 minute block, the tests were spread over 2 days. Which fine, but really opens up even further opportunities for cheating which is already a problem.

For the AP classes that involve writing, it's impossible to do writing tasks as given on the AP test in 45 min. Meaning if your exam is a DBQ or LEQ, when are you ever practicing these or being tested on this? I wonder how HB handles this.

Over 45 min math test? At APS? That’s ridiculous.

Aren’t AP writing tasks not “write all this in 90 minutes in one passage”, but multiple sections? We have had APs for decades, and I’m sure it’s a solvable problem.

Comments like these are so puzzling to me. It's like the no one has homework and everyone gets an A posters. Do you even have kids in high school taking most rigorous classes?

My DS goes to a school with 45 minute schedule, and has take 5 APs and got a 1550 on SAT. But let’s be honest, when you have a kid like this you don’t hear how the sausage is made, they and the teachers make it work.

The grinder kids in these big publics take 8-12+ APs and the schools offer every single AP the College Board has. So it's a lot more classes offered for the teachers to "make it work".

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My junior regularly takes tests that are longer than 45 minutes. The one year he had math in the daily 45 minute block, the tests were spread over 2 days. Which fine, but really opens up even further opportunities for cheating which is already a problem.

For the AP classes that involve writing, it's impossible to do writing tasks as given on the AP test in 45 min. Meaning if your exam is a DBQ or LEQ, when are you ever practicing these or being tested on this? I wonder how HB handles this.

Over 45 min math test? At APS? That’s ridiculous.

Aren’t AP writing tasks not “write all this in 90 minutes in one passage”, but multiple sections? We have had APs for decades, and I’m sure it’s a solvable problem.

Comments like these are so puzzling to me. It's like the no one has homework and everyone gets an A posters. Do you even have kids in high school taking most rigorous classes?

My DS goes to a school with 45 minute schedule, and has take 5 APs and got a 1550 on SAT. But let’s be honest, when you have a kid like this you don’t hear how the sausage is made, they and the teachers make it work.

Does anyone know what the neighboring school districts do? What does FCPS or MCPS use as their system?

I think the middle schools have an anchor day and the high schools don't. I think it works better without the anchor day. That way teachers and kids get used to the longer block schedules. I see pros and cons of switching back to 45 min classes, but I think the once a week anchor day was pretty much the worst since there were so few of them so no one was used to it.

Also it is pretty rich to see school board members worried about the lack of routine with block schedules when they have constructed a school year with about a million random days off.

Anonymous wrote:The other issue is they are supposed to have anchor days once a week (all classes 45 min) however since they so rarely have a full week of school (I believe last week was only the 2nd one all school year), they never have anchor days. So the current system is not operating as designed because APS has added so many random days off.

Our parent experience at DHMS is that the anchor days were very disruptive. They actually were the topic of many student complaints, with my student complaining that his teachers seemed very grump on anchor days. ; ) They even wrote the superintendent about it.

I can see where block scheduling is great for something like english or science where there's a lesson and then implementation, like a lesson and then a lab or a lesson and then writing. Both can get done on the same day. But it also seems that the blocks are way too long for things like health/PE. It's also been our experience that our student's one anchor class has been his foreign language elective these last two years. I do think that having that language access everyday has been more helpful than the every other day schedule with the blocks.

However, what I'd like to hear is the teachers'\ position on this issue. I think a lot of the mental health and learning slide issues we have seen are as much because we have sh-t on our teachers and it's rolled down to our students as they are because of all the other external factors (tech, social media, covid, mental health...).

Anonymous wrote:Regarding tests spread over two days, my guess is that teachers are using the same test for the class that meets every day and the other classes. if all classes were short, then the tests would adapt (maybe there would be more, shorter tests).

Regarding practicing for AP exams, I wonder if more of that will shift to practice at home. of course that leads to opportunity to cheat on the practice, which is not great.

It's also not the timed/testing conditions of a classroom. And yes, cheating.

I have noticed my student is doing a lot more writing in class in the AP english/history classes and teachers have shifted reading/note taking to home and then do daily quizes/checks. Which I think is an attempt to deter some of the cheating.

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Anonymous wrote:Block schedules always resulted in wasted time and are terrible for music and language learning

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I am no fan of block scheduling but what makes it bad for music? Orchestras and bands outside of school typically rehearse for more than 90 minutes at a time. When you factor in taking an instrument out and putting it away, 45 min seems like not enough time. I don't think that should be driving the block scheduling decision though! Whether or not kids have orchestra or band for 45 or 90 minutes, they still need to be practicing outside of school so that does not change.

You need to practice EVERY day. Block you so it only 3 times a week with a day between.

Agree you have to practice every day so that part is not impacted by which days band meets (since kids need to practice fundamentals outside of band anyway).

Anonymous wrote:Bring back textbooks, 50 classes, and tracking. Life was great in the 70’s and 80’s.

Uh, no. How dumb are you.