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Phoenix High ends block schedule format By VICKI GUARINO PHOENIX -- One of the first high schools in the area to lengthen class periods is going back to the old way of ordering the day. Phoenix High School is abandoning the so-called block schedule because the arrangement of 90-minute classes conflicts with too many other demands -- especially the state tests for CIM, the Certificate of Initial Mastery. The move, starting next fall, will significantly alter a scheduling system that has been in place for about six years. Classes for the school's 800-plus students will meet for shorter periods daily, all year long. Teachers long frustrated by the block schedule are supporting the change; students polled recently by the student newspaper are opposed. Administrators will decide in the coming weeks whether to divide the school day into seven 50-minute periods, or set 50- and 90-minute periods on alternating days. Phoenix-Talent Superintended Dave Willard said the school staff will be making that decision. The change was approved by the school board Thursday, ending mounting frustration among teachers with the block scheduling scheme. At Phoenix High School, students have been enrolled in courses that meet 90 minutes every day -- twice as long as the former schedule -- five days a week for half the year. At mid-term, enrollment changes and new classes begin. The theory was that students could better focus on course work by taking fewer classes at any one time. And teachers could be more effective because they would have fewer students at a time. Also, longer sessions had seemed to better suit many high school classes that involve elaborate set up. Phoenix was among the first area schools to go for the longer class periods. Within a few years, most Jackson County high school students were spending an hour and a half in each class. Ashland, Medford, and Central Point students are on block schedules. In Medford, for example, students at North and South have classes on alternating days all year long. Administrator Dan Zaklan said the schools moved to the block schedule five years ago for many of the same reasons Phoenix educators found. Zaklan said the block schedule has worked well and is well-liked. There has been no discussion of returning to shorter class periods. At the time schools began going to block schedules, educators all across the country were being urged to innovate, to study and to create new and different ways of using school time, Willard recalled. There had been mounting evidence that high school students could learn more if class sessions were lengthened. Groups of Phoenix-Talent parents and teachers studied the research and examined schedules in school in the United States and Canada before making that switch. Almost from the start, however, longer sessions were a hardship in some classes. "It's pretty tough to sit down and do math for 90 minutes," Willard conceded. As the years went by, teachers' frustration mounted. By having courses for only a half year, students were spending many months away from course work, forgetting too much of what they had learned. Wide-ranging national studies showed that students wouldn't lose much academic ground, Willard said, "but we're not believing that research any more.' The months off seemed particularly detrimental in second language studies. And packing what had been a year's worth of study into half a year was simply too much. Willard said a growing number of teachers in the core academic subjects were complaining that their classes were not covering a sufficient amount of work. Finally, the state standardized tests, the 10th grade CIM, was the schedule's undoing. Some students were taking the tests, which begin in February, without having gone through the subject class work. The new schedule no doubt will have its detractors. Willard noted that long classes have worked well in art, shop and science. And long periods fostered classroom discussion. "There were some things about it we really liked," Willard said. And students, polled by the school newspaper, overwhelmingly supported sticking with the block schedule. Willard figured there's no suiting everybody. "There's no perfect schedule, otherwise we'd all be on it already." Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA