Work & Academics

Critical Issues in Education

Maggie Stehr’s article Carson going to multiage classrooms allows us to revisit the idea of multiage classrooms in the educational setting today¹. The idea of multiage classrooms brings many different images to the mind for different individuals and different groups of people. Although brief, Stehr’s article raises some of the conflicting views associated with this old, yet controversial, educational reform practice. While decisions regarding multiage classrooms affect everyone within a school district, the group focused on in Stehr’s article—the group offering the most resistance to the reform—is the parent group at Roosevelt Public Elementary School. Many parents, quite rightfully, question whether using a multiage classroom approach will result in lowered educational opportunities for their children, especially if their children are older. Parents also question whether teachers will be able to adequately address educational standards—a factor increasingly important when considering the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.

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1. Multiage classrooms date back to the “one-room schoolhouses” that served rural America from the mid-17th century. At the time, because of significantly lower enrollment levels, they were very well suited for the educational needs of the participants. As the population expanded, so too did schools, leading to an easier division of grades based on a student’s age. This allowed for at lease two significant things: (1) curriculum could be standardized, and (2) teachers could specialize according to a single age group. One flaw with this argument, however, is that homogeneity within groups is always difficult to achieve; even within a group where students are only one year apart, they will already be at different levels of proficiency (Pardini, 2005). [back]