Barbara Fitzgerald has been a Navy wife for 30 years. She has transferred her three children in and out of many school districts during that time. She said that never has she had the problems she encountered when she had to transfer them into a 4x4 block schedule in Tampa, Florida.
"It is impossible to transfer into or from a normal school schedule or even an AB block, such as WPHS (West Potomac High School) currently has, into a 4x4. She [my daughter] would have been enrolled in seven classes in the "normal" school schedule, and would have to switch to four classes in Tampa. She would have lost credit. Many of her military friends did lose credit, had to go to summer school to make it up or take extra major classes as their electives. Transferring out also has problems, and usually, the child loses credit."
Fitzgerald's daughter is now a junior at Stanford University in California and said, "[Block scheduling is a] bad idea. It is bad for military kids, but I feel like it was really bad for certain subjects where you need practice every day or where you need to let one concept sink in before you can cram another one in right on top of it, especially math and foreign languages. When you only take something for one semester, too, it's easy to forget a lot over the nine months it might be until you take it again. You also have a lot of students who start graduating a semester or two early because they've built up enough credits to do so, so the school should consider whether that hurts the kid's education or not."
Other criticisms of the program include teachers having to instruct an additional class; no evidence that 4x4 improves achievement; band and AP courses will still be embedded (full year) and have to be matched; hard for students to sit still for longer classes; and too long a gap between subjects.
HENRY R. JOHNSON, JR., principal at West Potomac High School, sees it in another light. In meetings presented over the course of two weeks at both Carl Sandburg Middle School and West Potomac High School, he spoke of the advantages, including fewer classes, smaller classes, more individualized teacher contact, lighter book bag, opportunity to take more courses and earn eight credits (instead of seven), more chances to take electives, and opportunity to focus on fewer students and classes at one time.
Johnson feels that this will help meet the goals that West Potomac has established, like increasing the SOL pass rate of 3 percent, increasing reading and writing proficiency of the Class of 2006 by 5 percent, decreasing the D/F ratio in all classes by 12 percent, reducing discipline referral by 20 percent, and increasing active student participation in student activities.
One of the driving forces for this proposed scheduling may be an attempt to comply with the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001." This new federal law establishes new standards of accountability, whereas students from racial or ethnic minority groups, students with disabilities, students with limited English proficiency need to show adequate yearly progress. One of the theories is that this new scheduling will help bring up the "D" and "F" students, but doesn't help the "A/B" students.
Rebecca Lear, junior at West Potomac, adheres to that theory. "I think it's catered more towards bringing up the bottom. I don't see how 4x4 will change much for the better. I'm very happy with AB scheduling. Messing with my senior year isn't ideal," she said. Lear likes the schedule the way it is now because she has a very hard A day and a relatively easy B day. She worries that this will translate into a hard semester and an easy semester. Now, she feels like she has a little breather when she comes home at the end of an A day
Lear also wonders how they will fit in four 90-minute classes when they currently have three 90-minute classes and one 50-minute class. "Will they extend the school day or cut something out?" she wondered.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the two modes of scheduling is that with AB, students take seven courses that run a full year. The classes alternate, thus A days and B days. This gives students two days to complete homework or projects for harder classes. With 4x4 scheduling, students would take four courses each semester. They would complete those four courses the first semester and then begin four new courses the next semester. Embedded courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) and band, would meet every other day for the entire school year. Students will sit for SOL exams in January and in May; AP exams will be given only in May.
Greg Koons, guidance counselor at West Potomac, isn't sure how he feels about it yet. "I'm pretty open to it. I can see some advantages, if we can have smaller classes that would be wonderful." He also didn't think that this new scheduling would place an added burden on the counselors, except maybe in the very beginning.
Koons thinks that the administration would like to see it go in, but doesn't feel that it is being forced on them. "I'm hoping they'll wait a year and that they'll have full support."
Koons, along with other counselors, parents, teachers and students are just trying to get more information. Koons said that he and the other counselors have been invited to Edison High School next week to meet with their counselors.
Block scheduling has been in place at Edison for the past four years. One of their strongest advocates is Barbara Walker, social studies department chair at Edison. She has a ninth-grader at West Potomac and Johnson felt that she would be the best person to explain it. She prepared a Power Point presentation, which was shown at the meetings with Johnson.
She has been pleased with what she has seen at Edison and believes that the new scheduling has helped improves the scores there.
AT THIS POINT, there are more questions than there are answers. The questions run the gamut from who is voting on behalf of the different groups ... parent, teacher and student? The handful of people on the committees? Three parents, three faculty and two students? Who are the parent, faculty and student representatives? How can we contact them? Where is Mount Vernon in their decision-making process and why haven't we heard anything about that?
With the amount of opposition, it is possible that the effort may be suspended. Cernata Morse, West Potomac Parent Liaison, said "I think everybody needs to step back and look at the whole spectrum. This is a public high school and we need to look at the needs of the entire school population."
Informational meetings are tentatively scheduled for February 18, 19 and 20 at West Potomac, starting at 7 p.m., but are subject to change. For more information, visit the West Potomac web site www.fcps.edu/WestPotomacHS/WPHS%20Old/ptsa.html or call Cernata Morse at 703-718-2588.