The Adventures of Time - school scheduling - Brief Article

School Administrator, March, 1999

When my hometown of Auburn, a small city in central New York, opened its 2,800-student high school in the fall of 1970, school officials used the occasion to introduce something called modular scheduling. Their intent was to apply some flexibility to the traditional seven-period day.

As a freshman, I found the system bewildering: Every day seemed to bring a different set of "mods," or class meeting times. I'm guessing lots of other students and teachers concluded the same because by sophomore year, the mods had disappeared and the standard 50-minute bell schedule was back in place.

Today, alternative instructional schedules are much more common, and school leaders apparently have worked out most of the kinks--notwithstanding the concerns of those who teach marching band and a few other specialty subjects. What's more, the various forms of organizing the instructional day, week and year have never been greater.

Consider our coverage in this issue of The School Administrator in which we examine the four-day school week, the trimester schedule and delayed starting times for secondary schools, based on the latest research about teen-agers' sleeping and waking behaviors.

We also provide some significant insights into block scheduling by Michael Rettig, Robert Lynn Canady and David Hottenstein, some of the top authorities on the subject whose books can offer you additional help. You also will find among the book reviews a critique of a new work on block scheduling.

Finally, this issue also carries a special insert. This is AASA's year in review, our 1998 Annual Report. We hope it makes you proud to be a member of our association.

Jay P. Goldman

Voice: 703-875-0745

E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org