Tooele County School District officials are proceeding with plans to alter high school class schedules by increasing the number of class periods each day from four to five.
Called a five-by-five schedule, the new schedule will divide 10 class periods between two days, five the first day and five more the second day.
Currently most high schools in the district follow a four-by-four class schedule for a total of eight classes with four each day.
“If we’re going to improve student performance, we have to change the way we are doing some things,” said Scott Rogers, Tooele County School District superintendent. “We won’t get different results by continuing to do the same thing.”
The Tooele County School Board approved the move to a five-by-five schedule for secondary schools during their Feb. 10, 2015 meeting after a report by a district task force on scheduling.
The task force, which consisted of teachers, principals and district administrators, recommended that all junior high schools move to a five-by-five schedule at the beginning of the 2015 school year with high schools adopting the schedule change in the fall of 2016.
“It takes longer to plan the implementation of five-by-five at the high school level,” said Hal Strain, the school district’s secondary education director. “High school schedules are more complicated with more electives and things like career and technical education courses, advanced placement classes, school activities and sports.”
At the junior high level all the core classes — language arts, math, and science — were double blocked. Students go to those classes every day. Other classes are held every other day.
At the high school level, each school will decide how to implement the five-by-five schedule. A school-level committee of teachers, administrators and parents will make recommendations, according to Strain.
Strain implemented the five-by-five schedule seven years ago when he was principal at Clarke Johnsen Junior High. The schedule change contributed to increased student performance at CJJHS as measured by proficiency tests, he said.
“At the high school level, the five-by-five schedule will be more flexible and driven by student performance,” Strain said. “A student struggling in math may have math every day where a student doing well in math may not. The thing I really like about the five-by-five schedule is it gives schools the opportunity to design RTIs that can occur during the school day.”
RTI, an acronym for Response To Intervention, is an education strategy where teachers continually evaluate student performance to measure the effectiveness of teaching and student learning.
When individual students have trouble mastering course content, teachers design intervention strategies to help students succeed, Strain said.
Interventions may be as simple as reteaching a concept or involving specialists, special education teachers, or resources outside of the classroom to help students master a concept or learn a skill.
The five-by-five schedule opens up the door to interventions like double-scheduling classes, adding a subject lab during the school schedule, or allowing more time for some subjects through block scheduling, according to Strain.
In addition to intervention, the five-by-five schedule also allows more opportunity for students to enroll in performing arts, fine arts, career and technical education, advanced placement, and concurrent enrollment classes, according to Strain.
Teachers are working with their principals to implement the five-by-five change, according to Rick Harrison, Tooele Education Association vice president.
“We support improved student performance,” he said. “And that’s what the five-by-five schedule is about.”
Teachers have some concerns but nothing that is insurmountable, according to Harrison.
One of those concerns is the class periods in the five-by-five schedule will be shorter. While the five-by-five schedule adds one class period each day, the length of the day will not change. The average length of a class period will change from 85 minutes to 70 minutes, according to Harrison.
“Teachers will need to go through their lesson plans and select the learning activities that are most effective and efficient,” he said. “It will take work, but it can be done.”
With the possibility that some students may take up to two additional classes, some teachers and administrators are concerned about an increased load of homework on students.
“The five-by-five schedule has led to a discussion about homework in general that has been very beneficial by itself,” Strain said. “We’ve talked about things like why do we assign homework, how much homework is enough and the relationship between homework and course rigor.”
Harrison envisions the development of guidelines on homework. Among other things, the guidelines would direct teachers to consider their students’ overall workload when assigning homework, he said.
The effects the five-by-five class schedule will have on class size is another concern.
If one more class period is added to the day but the total number of students remains the same, class size should go down, according to Strain.
But some people fear that with double-scheduling some classes, class size may increase, he said.
“It’s going to vary, but I don’t see class sizes, especially in the core subjects, increasing a whole lot,” Strain said.
Tooele County School District will not be the first district in Utah to use the five-by-five schedule in secondary schools.
Before recommending the schedule change, Strain and other representatives of the school district’s scheduling task force visited two schools in the Nebo School District that use the five-by-five schedule.
Schools in Washington, Carbon, and Juab county school districts also use the five-by-five schedule.
“Schools that use the five-by-schedule report that they have seen increased student performance,” Strain said. “And that’s what this is about, improving student performance. I firmly believe that if we improve learning in the classroom and increase student performance, higher test scores and better school grades will follow.”