Meridian Plans to Toughen Math, Science Requirement

By Bill Roberts, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Apr. 26–Meridian School District isn’t waiting for State Board of Education members to resurrect their proposal for more math and science curriculum in Idaho high schools.

While the State Board has backed off its plan for at least a year, the district will push ahead with toughening the curriculum for its 8,000 high school students by requiring more math and science for the class of 2010.

Making room for more required courses, however, could force changes to the school day structure, class sizes and electives.

A key challenge: adding more mandatory classes without jeopardizing opportunities for kids to enroll in electives, from professional-technical programs to band and art.

"Electives are the reason many kids stay in school," said Linda Clark, district superintendent.

Meridian high schools are expected to come to the school board in October with proposals for reordering the school day to make room for more math and science. New schedules could take effect beginning in 2007 or 2008.

Changing the number of periods in school days could have ripple effects ranging from robbing some kids of a few extra minutes of sleep in the morning to altering bus schedules.

And even as school officials begin talking about how a new school day might look in Meridian, teachers, administrators and parents don’t agree on what the day should look like.

Peggy Drzayich, president of the Eagle High School parents association, has little problem with extending the school day, if that’s needed for more instruction. But she worries that the district is pushing for more math and science when kids still need help in learning how to be better communicators.

"Kids get out of high school who don’t know how to write a simple letter," she said. "Not every child is going to go into math- and science-related fields, but every kid is going to have to communicate."

Meridian School District is moving ahead with math and science because students need to graduate with a better understanding in both subjects if they intend to compete in an increasingly math- and science-driven workplace and college environment, Clark said.

Making sense out of the patchwork of school schedules, however, could be difficult.

Mountain View and Meridian high schools, for example, use a system in which students earn 64 credits over four years — more than enough to take an additional math and science course without cutting into electives, administrators said. The schools operate on block schedules, which mean students have fewer classes each day than in traditional high schools, but meet for longer times.

Eagle and Centennial high schools operate on a system in which students earn 48 credits in four years. Those students could face tough choices over balancing electives against increased math and science requirements if the high schools don’t change schedules.

Eagle and Centennial have six-period days, although each incorporates some block scheduling into their routine. If the two schools didn’t change class schedules, kids would have the number of elective credits cut from the current 10 to 12 to four to eight if all the math and science requirements go into effect.

Several Eagle High School faculty members balk at going to a block schedule. While it would accommodate the extra math and science credits, they say teachers wouldn’t see students every day and would miss the chance to reinforce learning.

"Retention becomes an issue," said Seth McMullen, a choir and music theory teacher at Eagle High.

Students in block schedules see both good and bad in their schedules. For foreign language, Mountain View senior Brian Brooks would like to have classes Monday through Friday.

"It’s best to practice every day," he said. But in classes like calculus, he wants the longer classes to work on problems instead of breaking them up over a couple of days.

Students can lose about 25 hours of instruction a year under block scheduling compared to traditional schedules. For some classes, such as a rigorous advanced-placement class that students take for both high school and college credit, many students want every minute of instruction they can get, said Alta Graham, Centennial principal.

"They lose one quarter of the time" compared to classes on traditional schedules, she said.

But at Mountain View, block scheduling allows teachers the time to take learning beyond the traditional lecture. "We have to break out of that mold and engage kids more," said Sally Mitchell, a junior English teacher at Mountain View.

Mitchell, for example, had enough time in her 90-minute classes — compared to about an hour in regular schedules — for kids to study about the 1920s Jazz Age and then play a flapper game in which kids learned about the slang and other cultural parts of the Roaring ’20s.

People looking to national trends as a guide for which schedule system is the best may be frustrated. High schools in about half the country use some form of block scheduling, according to Michael D. Rettig, a professor at James Madison University in Virginia who has studied block scheduling for about 15 years. There also is no clear trend showing students attending under a block schedule do any better at school than other students, he said.

Clark, Meridian’s superintendent, had hoped the four high schools could adopt a single schedule. Uniformity would help ease transition between high schools. For example, students at Centennial or Eagle have a difficult time taking classes in Meridian High’s professional-technical classes because the schedules between the two schools are so different, Clark said.

But Clark said she’s ready to listen to differing ideas on how to approach scheduling.

Both Eagle and Centennial are leaning toward abandoning a six-period day in favor of seven periods, which would boost the number of credits in four years from 48 to 56, and allow for more math and science without cutting deeply into electives. It also could mean starting school at 7:30 a.m. instead of 7:45 to add a few minutes to each period.

Colette Blair, an Eagle High parent, has no problems with changing the morning start time for schools. "You set the alarm, you get up and take care of your responsibility," she said.

No matter which program schools pick, however, the new math and science requirements could mean larger class sizes in Meridian District at schools already brimming with students.

The district likely would not hire extra math and science teachers beyond what is needed to accommodate the district’s growth, Clark said, even though it would increase the number of math and science classes. That could mean putting more kids into a classroom that already often has more than 30 kids. It also could mean that it could become tougher to afford teachers for electives where there are few students, Graham said.

In classes like third- and fourth-year German, for example, where Centennial has only five students, those students likely will end up in a class with more first- and second-year students, so the teacher has a larger number of kids in the period.

Meridian District is a long way from making final decisions on how high school class schedules will be different as more math and science requirements go into effect.

"It’s not easy," Clark said. "It’s a complicated thing."

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Idaho Statesman, Boise

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