Today Mr. Limoges came in to discuss block scheduling since the school board has been considering implementing it in the school.
Mr. Limoges is against implementing block scheduling for two reasons:
1. He found that block schools tend to perform 4 percent lower on the PAWS test than traditional schools.
2. He found that a student would miss more class time with certain classes on a block schedule than he or she would on a traditional schedule (though the student would also tend to get to more of certain other classes).
The students said they liked the block schedule because they would have less homework since teachers would tend to instruct for 60 minutes and let the class do homework for the remaining 30 minutes.
In response, Mr. Limoges argued that the students would be losing 60 minutes of instruction time each week, which he thought was unacceptable.
The students responded that they would have more access to the teacher during the homework process, which would be of more benefit to them than the extra direct instruction.
Mr. Limoges didn't agree that this facilitated homework time was as educationally effective as direct instruction time. Thus, this is a point we have to gather data on if we want to convince Mr. Limoges.
The class also argued with Mr. Limoges' assertion that block schools had lower PAWS scores. Since block schedule schools tend to have a lower dropout rate, they would tend to keep students that didn't perform well in school. These students would tend to depress their average PAWS scores, whereas traditional schools could get rid of those low performing students and increase their average PAWS scores.
At the end Mr. Limoges proposed the 4 1/2 day school week. In this schedule the student would still take 8 slightly longer classes, but skip two of them each day. They would also get a 20 minutes study hall period. On Friday the students would go to all 8 classes (though they would be shortened) and then leave at 12:30.
A lot of people really liked the 4 1/2 day schedule.
