The less we know about things, the more passionately we feel about them. Or so says Jonathan Yardley, a Washington Post columnist who dubbed that concept the Yardley Rule.
Whether that’s a truism or merely a theory doesn’t much matter when it comes to our beliefs. One thing I don’t know much about is the much-debated high school reform implemented last year in Harford County Public Schools, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have strong feelings about it. I do.
There are numerous elements, all well-intentioned, no doubt, to help improve the education our kids receive from our school system. But I can’t get past the class schedule part of it, most commonly known as the block schedule, that began in the last school year.
In essence, our high schools have four 90-minute classes each day. Some classes meet every day, most meet every other day. For an hour and a half, our kids, ages 14 to 18, have one subject. The next day, they have four more 90-minute classes, some the same, some not. That’s not a bad gig if you’re in phys ed and outside playing softball on a beautiful day, or working along a stream as part of an environmental science class.
I don’t have to name the classes none of us would want to sit through for 90 minutes at a time. We’ve all had those dreaded classes; for those of us who have forgotten, our kids remind us with their daily litany of complaints. When the four-period day was proposed, I didn’t like it. I think 90 minutes is too long for a class. We live in an attention-span deprived society and expecting our kids to stay focused for that long in each class is too much. It’s also too much to expect our teenagers to retain information from class to class when they don’t meet every day.
Missing a class can be deadly, leading to longer gaps between classes. For example, in a week when the every other day classes are meeting Tuesday and Thursday, missing Thursday means a student isn’t exposed to that subject from Tuesday of one week until Monday of the next.
Another shortcoming of the block schedule is the loss of some flexibility, both in making individual schedules work and in the offerings that fit into a school’s curriculum. Anyone with a high school student in Harford County Public Schools knows the block schedule is falling short of the mark. Teachers have adapted, not necessarily for the best, to make the best of a less than ideal system. Some subjects have been altered irreparably.
One of the new schedule’s dubious successes is that some students still like it. Why? Because they frequently wind up with free time at the end of a period, free time that they use to get their homework done.
Those criticisms, obviously, come from an outsider, a parent, without a foundation in education. Those in education have other ideas, hence, the adoption of the block schedule. Not everyone with a strong foundation in education agrees.
Harford County Councilman Dick Slutzky, who retired after a long career as a teacher and coach, most notably at Aberdeen High School, is among those questioning the effectiveness and the success of the block schedule. At Monday night’s school board meeting, Slutzky doubled the old 20 question routine, posing about 40 questions to the members of the board.
Slutzky, speaking on behalf of the Harford County Council, was advocating that the school system do an honest, impartial evaluation of the high school reform program, particularly the four-period day. The time for such a study is way past due. This is too important for our kids to rely on anecdotal evidence, or statistical information that can leave doubts about their objectivity in anyone’s mind.
Don’t forget one of those sayings famously attributed to several people: “There are three kinds of lies — lies, damn lies and statistics.”
It’s time for Harford County Public Schools to say “Our high school reform program is a success, we believe in it and we welcome any evaluation of it.”
And that’s something, to invoke Mr. Yardley, that I believe passionately.
Originally published in The Record on March 21, 2008.
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