Block Scheduling Disadvantages

Agriculture and wealth have dominated education for centuries. Traditional school systems were created to work around family farms in order to boost attendance in local schools. In 1852, primary education was made to be compulsory by law, meaning that every child from age five to ten was required by law to attend school. Teachers were hired and schools grew, but the traditional system stayed in place with long summers off to accommodate farms and other jobs students needed to support their families. But in recent industrialized societies, non traditional school systems are popping up all over the world. In schools and communities across America, non traditional school schedules have been debated and tested in the last two decades. These schedules include but are not limited to block scheduling and year long schedule. Each schedule has its own advantages and disadvantages. Block scheduling has longer class periods that meet fewer times each day and week. Most schools with block schedules …show more content…
Some critics argue that block scheduling is not beneficial to students as it is inevitable they miss school once in a while. With block scheduling, one class period is the equivalent of two traditional class periods. If a student misses one day, they will miss out on class time, participation, experiments and instructional time that usually cannot be made up without a large amount of effort on both the students, teachers and parents (Cromwell). Not only is student absence an issue but also teacher absence is another issue. If a teacher is absent are substitutes really qualified to teach a ninety minute class period? Already students have a hard time when a teacher is absent because the teacher has certain rules and expectations for behavior and the teacher knows the students better. Hence, these are the reasons why students won’t benefit from a block