Block Schedule Statistics Encourage Cda District Lake City High Experiment Appears To Be Limiting Discipline, Attendance Problems

Attendance increased and discipline problems decreased last semester at Lake City High School, but administrators say it’s too early to tell whether the school’s new block scheduling program was responsible.

School officials have released a preliminary survey comparing grades, test scores, discipline problems, attendance and other factors under block scheduling and under the school’s traditional schedule.

“We really encourage both the board and the public to look at this as baseline data,” Lake City Principal John Brumley told the school board late last month.

Among the findings:

Disruptive classroom behavior dropped from 145 incidents in 1997-98 to 10 incidents as of Dec. 22, 1998.

Total discipline problems decreased from 341 last school year to 85 during the first semester of this year.

About 108 students cut class or were tardy as of December 1998, compared with 471 students in 1997-98.

Grades didn’t change much under block scheduling, with 58 percent of students getting A’s and B’s in spring 1997 and 59 percent getting those grades the following spring.

Overall, 56 percent of students, 66 percent of parents and 82 percent of teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that they liked block scheduling.

The Coeur d’Alene School Board approved a two-year block scheduling pilot program at Lake City last spring. Under the new schedule, which is becoming popular at schools around the country, students take four 88-minute classes each day and switch to their four other classes the following day.

The block schedule shortens the lunch break five minutes and decreases instruction time per academic subject 15 hours over the semester, from 82.5 hours to 67.5 hours.

That decrease prompted 51 percent of teachers to say they had covered less material last semester under block scheduling than in previous semesters.

“It’s been a learning experience for not only teachers, but students,” said U.S. history and health teacher Jim Asher. “Kids have too much time between class and forget to do their homework. The responsibility has to be laid back on students.”

Lake City junior Luc Hammond said he likes the new schedule, but isn’t completely sold.

“It offers me more class choices,” Hammond said. “But the attendance policy is a little strict.”

Under the school’s revised attendance policy, students can miss a class four times each semester without losing credit.

Students with perfect attendance don’t have to take final exams, a policy administrators say they are reconsidering.

Last year, students could miss class nine times without losing credit or being forced to take a competency test.

Like last year, students are still required to be in class 90 percent of the time, said Dale Roberts, a Lake City assistant principal in charge of discipline.

“Overall, we’re seeing less discipline problems, less poor choices made in the classroom, and students are in class more,” Roberts said.

Lake City administrators will continue to make changes to the block scheduling program and hope to present final survey results to the school board in a year so they can vote on whether to formally adopt the schedule.