MORE CHOICE

Cole offers students new options: Kids select 'academy' best suited to individual interests (HEATHER LAKE, August 30, 2003, Antelope Valley Press)

Teachers and administrators at Cole Middle School are challenging the traditional methods of teaching by offering its student body a choice in how they learn.

When the bell rang at the start of this school year, 40% of the sixth- through eighth-grade student body were not only checking out who they would be sitting with in home room, but also who they would be sitting with in almost every class, until they graduate the eighth grade.

Beginning last December, students and parents were disseminated information about academies and asked to choose the one of three they thought was the best fit.

Two smaller academies, a Science and Technology academy and an Oral Written and Visual Arts academy, each contain 20% of the student body.

The remaining 60% of the students are in the Liberal Arts academy, so named in keeping with the "looping" theme, but basically a traditional learning option.

Looping is the name for the process that puts students with the same teacher for certain subjects year after year.

If all goes as planned, sixth-graders just starting at Cole will be the first group to graduate from the eighth grade having spent their entire middle school education not only with the same students but for the most part, with the same teachers.

This isn't necessarily the sort of school you'd choose for your kid, but imagine a system with hundreds of thousands of such experiments going on and the best ones being adopted by other schools. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 30, 2003 1:14 PM