The slowdown of the multiage classroom: what was once a popular approach has fallen victim to NCLB demands for grade-level testing

School Administrator, March, 2005 by Priscilla Pardini

Nevertheless, she believes that putting such programs in place proved overwhelming for many site administrators and teachers. "Often we're afraid of this thing we don't think we understand," she says. "We don't realize that we live it everyday, given the varying ages and varying abilities of kids" in single-grade classrooms. "Yet when you formalize it and call it 'nongraded' or 'multiage,' people don't understand it anymore."

Cultural Challenge

True multiage programs have proven difficult to put in place. Kinsey notes that in some cases, teachers are not teaching across ages. "They're tending to teach 1st graders this and 2nd graders that," she says. That's the result of teachers not understanding the underlying theory of nongradedness, and evidence of inadequate staff development, says Wright State University's Schatmeyer, who has studied factors that promote and impede the switch from graded to multiage education.

Parents also can find it hard to understand the workings of a multiage classroom. Those with older children in the class sometimes fear the curriculum is not challenging enough and that their children will spend all their time helping the younger children. Parents of younger children worry that the curriculum is too difficult and that the older children will dominate the class. Rodgers says one problem in Kentucky was parents' dissatisfaction with the "continuous progress reports" that replaced traditional report cards.

It can be particularly difficult for multiage programs to succeed in schools where they operate alongside traditional classrooms. Teachers "are not of the same mind ... not in synch with one another," says Schatmeyer, adding, "It sends mixed signals." Stephen Palmer, principal of Shay Elementary School in Harbor Springs, Mich., studied the relationship between multiage and single-grade classrooms in seven Michigan elementary schools. His findings: Such schools face "numerous organizational, school culture and leadership challenges." (See related story, page 26.)

Kinsey believes it was Kentucky's decision to mandate multiage programs that undermined its success there. "My guess is they probably didn't have the kind of support system in place they needed to make it successful," she says. A better approach would have been to gradually "bring people along" by providing them with ongoing, quality professional development on the subject. Roellke agrees. "So much of the process relies upon local capacity and willingness to adopt a multiage approach," he wrote in "The Promise of Multiage Grouping," an article he co-authored with Elizabeth Kappler for Kappa Delta Pi Record in 2002.

Such an effort demands strong school leadership. "The principal makes or breaks the program," says Schatmeyer. Miller, author of Children at the Center: Implementing the Multiage Classroom, calls leadership, strong teacher commitment to the needs of children and support from parents and others the key "prerequisites for success" of any multiage program.

NCLB's Impact