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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
Multiage education, hailed as recently as 10 years ago as a promising way to restructure schools and boost student achievement, has fallen on hard times. Interest in the issue has waned, with new research on the topic virtually nonexistent and attendance at national multiage conferences a fraction of what it once was.
Schools across the country are cutting existing multiage programs, or choosing not to begin new ones. Even the state of Kentucky, which in 1990 heralded ungraded primary education as a linchpin of its sweeping school reform effort, has seen the scope of its multiage initiative reduced by half.
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Some trace the decline of multiage education to No Child Left Behind and its emphasis on standardized, grade-level testing. "[President] Bush's high-stakes testing has paralyzed the movement," says Jim Grant, one of the country's best-known consultants and authors on the subject.
Others say it's not the standards movement per se that's to blame for the smaller number of multiage classrooms these days, but rather a general decrease in interest in programs that focus on the affective side of children's education.
"We've seen a pendulum swing toward academics and away from approaches that pay attention to what's happening to students emotionally and socially," says Susan Kinsey, a professor of early childhood education at Governors State University near Chicago.
Still others contend that multiage education has fallen out of favor because it means more work for the classroom teacher. After all, a typical multiage class includes children up to three years apart in age and even more disparate in terms of ability. Launching multiage programs also can be divisive, particularly in schools that house a mix of traditional and ungraded classrooms. And explaining the program's philosophy, mission and day-to-day operation to parents has proven difficult. Bruce A. Miller, senior evaluation advisor at the Portland, Ore.-based Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory, views the shift from a traditional to multiage approach as nothing less than "an evolving, long-term change at the deepest levels of teacher beliefs about how humans learn."
To be sure, the movement still has strong advocates, among them Kenneth Schatmeyer, a professor of teacher education at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. The beauty of the multiage approach, he says, is that "when you do away with grade levels, it forces teachers to look at the individual needs of each child." He adds: "There's no research that shows that gradedness helps children at all. In fact, if anything, it's completely the antithesis of developmentally appropriate practice."
What's more, multiage programs are still going strong in many areas. Consider, for example, Sycamore Elementary School in Claremont, Calif., which has embraced the multiage philosophy ever since it opened in 1890.
"Let other schools do what they must," says Principal Tom Cooper, "but Sycamore will be ever-insistent in promoting the principles of multiage education."
Stephen Daeschner, superintendent of the Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Ky., also remains a believer. "We are very supportive of the philosophy of mixing up kids," Daeschner says. "And we've generally found that when a teacher understands the concept and how to teach multiage kids, we get better results out of those classrooms than straight-grade classes."
One-Room School
The multiage movement traces its origins to the one-room schoolhouses that dotted the rural American landscape from the mid-17th to the mid-19th centuries. Although born of necessity, such schools were in fact "very healthy," says Robert H. Anderson, a professor of education at the University of South Florida in Tampa and one of the earliest proponents of programs that deliberately mix students of different ages together in the same class.
Anderson, an AASA member since 1950 who also taught at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has been researching multiage education for more than a half-century. He describes the one-room schoolhouse as an "accidental prototype of nongradedness" that served children well. "Older kids helped younger kids and [in the process] got insights into how the human mind develops and grows."
As the nation's population and its public schools grew in size, students were divided into grades according to their age. "It was more convenient," concedes Anderson. "Everyone could use the same textbook, the same curriculum. And teachers didn't have to know as much." But according to Anderson, what schools gained in convenience, they lost in terms of effectiveness. "Creating homogeneous groups never works," he says. "It's artificial. In any group of 6- or 7-year-olds you already have a tremendous range of ability levels."
Over the years, administrative expediency prevailed and the practice of dividing students into grades based on their ages became common practice. Unfortunately, says Anderson, who in 1996 co-authored one of the authoritative books on the subject, Non-Gradedness: Making It Happen, "The bad habits of the last 100 years continue to dominate the way people think about teaching and the way schools of education train teachers."
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