User:GhostRiver/block

Description
In the United States, the traditional secondary education schedule is based around the Carnegie Unit, which measures learning as a function of time spent in the classroom. Traditional, Carnegie-based schedules operate under the assumption that a year's worth of learning in a certain subject is satisfactorily completed in 120 hours, and that each academic subject should be allotted the same amount of time. As such, the average school day typically consists of between six and eight class periods, with periods lasting between 40 and 60 minutes. While the block schedule retains the principle of the Carnegie Unit for its scheduling, learning units are arranged into fewer classes per day, with each one lasting for a longer percentage of the school day.

There are four basic methods of designing block schedules. Some maintain the number of classes that students take per grading period, with students taking different classes on different days, while in others, students take fewer courses per grading period.

Teachers and administration
Teachers who enjoy block scheduling cite that the longer periods allow them to vary the instructional strategies that they employ in their classes, and that they allow their students to gain a more in-depth understanding of academic concepts. A survey of teachers found that, while block scheduling increased the level of detail given to classroom material, the amount of material covered in the classroom decreased: students were studying fewer topics in greater detail. Outside of academics, teachers found no obvious impacts that block scheduling had on their classroom climate, or on the amount of planning time they had in the day.

School principals have echoed teachers' sentiments that block scheduling allows instructors to deviate from lectures and accommodate varied learning styles, which they believed would improve academic achievement as well as teacher-student relationships. Some principals, however, voiced concerns about the abilities of younger students to focus for the full length of a block period. Another concern was that 4x4 block scheduling of classes typically taught sequentially, such as foreign languages and mathematics, would disrupt students' learning if they did not receive instruction in these subjects year-round.

Attendance and academics
While a four-year longitudinal study found that block scheduling increased student performance in individual classes, there was no correlation between high school schedule type and cumulative grade point average or student attendance.

Standardized testing
Students in the US state of Georgia who attended schools on a 4x4 block schedule experienced worse outcomes on the Georgia High School Graduation Test than their peers who attended schools with traditional instructional schedules. This could be due in part to attendance issues, as an absence in a block-scheduled class is equivalent to two absences in a traditional schedule.