As the Ann Arbor school district evaluates how to configure its schools for the future, officials will be taking a hard look at the effectiveness of combined or split classes, an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in the district.
The district is turning to combination classes as they weigh keeping the small neighborhood elementary model.
The district has 18 classes this year that combine two grades. That's out of 286 total classes in elementary schools. Last year, there were 13 combination classes.
In certain schools, grades are purposefully combined year after year — such as at Angell Elementary, where two teachers have pioneered a dynamic model that the school has embraced.
In other instances, grades are combined as a result of fluctuations in student populations and fewer teachers to accommodate small class sizes — and AAPS officials think student performance needs to be evaluated as they consider whether to keep Ann Arbor’s small neighborhood schools. Combining two grades in one classroom could help the district keep more schools open because it could allow schools to operate with fewer teachers.
Superintendent Jeanice Kerr Swift said multi-age classrooms are less common in districts with newer, “big box” elementary schools.
“Is it preferable to keep our small schools and keep the multi-age as a part of that?” Swift said. “I know what is preferable for all of us is for the parents to have a choice.”
The district’s Board of Education has placed the combination class discussion near the top of its agenda for consideration this fall, as Swift canvasses the district to evaluate the Ann Arbor community’s priorities for public education.
The combined class experience
Kris Hepner and Natalie DePasquale have pioneered the multi-age combination classroom model at Ann Arbor’s Angell Elementary School.
Nine years ago, the two teachers were asked to start working together in a combination first- and second-grade class and embraced the challenge. With two rooms side-by-side, the “Hep-Deps” have become a dynamic fixture in the school.
Hepner’s room has become known as the “Rocket” room where many full group activities take place, and DePasquale’s as “Pluto”—a place where students can choose to work in a quieter setting and receive one-on-one attention.
“Kids are more willing to take chances and are a little more self-reliant,” Hepner said.
The continuum of learning that a combined classroom delivers means students can be taught at a level at which they’re ready to master.
“We can take kids where they’re at,” DePasquale said.
This fall, DePasquale and Hepner are teaching 46 students. About 15 of them are in first grade, and 31 are in second grade. However, only eight of the second-grade students were in the Hep-Dep classroom last year.
Though many parents are nervous at first when they find their child has been placed in their classrooms, Hepner and DePasquale said it doesn’t take long for that feeling to fade.
Susan McCreadie of Ann Arbor has two daughters enrolled at Burns Park Elementary School this fall — and this is the first year that both of them are in a combined class.
McCreadie’s daughter Elle is a first-grade student in a class of first- and second-graders, and her daughter Kaitlin is a fourth-grade student in a class of fourth- and fifth-graders.
Though she didn’t know her children would be placed in a combination class until this fall, McCreadie said she didn’t have an issue with it. But there were other parents with initial reservations, McCreadie said.
So far, the girls say they love it, McCreadie said.
“I don’t look at it as a negative thing,” McCreadie said. “My mindset is that it’s always good to deal with different situations.”
For Kaitlin, McCreadie said being with older students who are preparing to make the switch to middle school has been good for her. Though Kaitlin misses some of the art projects that other fourth-grade students are doing, she’s taken to the organizational skills that higher grades are learning.
“It’s pushing her to grow faster, and for the type of girl that she is, it’s totally fine,” McCreadie said. “I don’t know that all kids thrive in that.”
Local opinions vary
The Ann Arbor Educational Association — the union that represents the majority of the district’s teachers — has reaffirmed its stance to AAPS officials that it does not support using combined classes.
AAEA President Linda Carter she’s visited numerous elementary schools this fall and has seen a number of combined classes.
At a recent Board of Education meting, Carter read from a position statement the AAEA’s Elementary Caucus drafted three years ago objecting to using combination grades as a solution to budget challenges.
“Combination grade classes have a negative impact that reaches beyond the one affected classroom into all common grade-level classrooms,” Carter said.
According to the AAEA’s statement, multi-age classes create large class sizes that make it difficult for teachers to differentiate their instruction and harder to address achievement gap issues. Lessons are shortened or altered, and the demands of combined classes create an “unfair” amount of work for teachers, the AAEA alleges.
But Deborah Ball, dean of the School of Education at the University of Michigan, said making a combined class successful is dependent on the ability of the school district to support teachers asked to take on multiple grade levels with professional development sessions.
Before her role with U-M, Ball worked for about 20 years as a teacher in East Lansing Public Schools and Spartan Village Schools, where she headed numerous multi-age classrooms.
Most of the time, Ball said she found herself in a combination classroom because an elementary school didn’t have enough students for a complete class. There were several occasions when Ball said she taught a combination first-, second- and third-grade class that was designed that way.
Because students naturally vary in their proficiency in a grade level, combining two grades means there will be overlap in skill levels between students, Ball said. That way, students working below their grade level can do some of the work they need to move forward without the teacher taking too much time away from the rest of the class.
The main difficulty Ball said she experienced as a teacher was in tailoring certain subjects to be taught in a multi-grade room. For example, Ball said science typically has a rigid set of lessons by grade, whereas math and English lessons could be easily adapted to accommodate multiple grades in one.
For teachers asked to take on a combined class for the first time, Ball said it’s important that they be supported with professional development sessions.
“It’s a question of how you support teachers,” Ball said.
The automatic response to a combination class would be to physically divide it in half and teach a lesson to each group, Ball said — noting that that approach would require more work and planning by the teacher than is probably necessary.
Ball said school districts shouldn’t assume that a teacher can take on a combination class without any guidance.
“The structure by itself doesn’t lead to big differences,” Ball said, explaining that it depends on a teacher’s instructional ability to attend to the skill levels of every student.
Combination classes are often formed in urban and suburban settings when the grouping of full-sized classes result in some leftover students that are put in a combined class, according to the most recent edition of the "International Guide to Student Achievement," edited by John Hattie and Eric M. Anderman.
Because they’re often temporary, combination classes are typically viewed with suspicion by parents.
There’s conflicting research on both sides of the issue regarding student performance, and the guide concluded that there’s not enough to draw significant conclusions: “The small number of studies and the lack of strong evidence favoring single-grade classes do not conclusively support their argument that the more difficult teaching environment in combination classes leads to a decrease in student achievement.”
For example, in 2008 David Sims, an associate professor in the economics department at Brigham Young University, analyzed second- and third-grade test results in math and language on California’s standardized tests. His conclusion was that combined classes have an “unambiguously negative effect on student achievement and the effect is greater for third graders than second graders.”
On the flip side, in 2003, Ian A. G. Wilkinson and Richard J. Hamilton tested 484 students in nine New Zealand schools. Wilkinson is a professor at The Ohio State University’s Department of Teaching and Learning, and Hamilton is a senior lecturer at The University of Auckland’s School of Learning, Development and Professional Practice.
In each of the schools examined, there was one combined class and one single-grade class.
The authors concluded that the differences between students in each type of class were “minimal.”
Combined classes or combined schools?
The school board has targeted combination classes as a topic for evaluation this fall as the district readies to enter into a discussion this year on how to structure its buildings, programs and offerings. It’s an expansion on its redistricting and school closure pursuit that it initiated about a year ago.
“I keep getting conflicted information – as a trustee it’s quite challenging for me to wade through it,” said Board of Education Trustee Simone Lightfoot. “I’m hearing it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I’m hearing that it’s not good for our teachers and the delivery of service. I look forward to that discussion, especially as we move forward with more combination classes.”
When two grades are combined in one class that’s taught by a specialist in multi-age education, Swift said results can be extraordinary.
“The flip side of multi-age — when it’s done only for the purpose of saving money, as opposed to doing it by design … to me that’s the crux of the issue,” Swift said, noting there’s room for review to see if the strategy is effective in Ann Arbor.
Teachers in AAPS at the fifth-grade level have said that they prefer to have a class of 30 to 31 students instead of a combination class of fourth- and fifth-graders, said Jane Landefeld, the district’s Director of Student Accounting.
However, Ann Arbor Open School has multi-age classrooms by design — and the school has a waiting list of several hundred students.
School board Trustee Andy Thomas said it comes down to the ability of the teacher to manage a classroom, but that NWEA testing that the district has engaged in will help show if there are advantages or disadvantages to a combined class.
Trustee Glenn Nelson said a discussion on combination classes will come in to play when district officials talk about attendance boundaries this fall.
“One of the reasons that people prefer larger schools and larger numbers of kids in each grade level — it’s much easier to avoid having combination classes,” Nelson said. “When we get to the point where we’re defining what the attendance boundary issue is all about, it may come back in a more definite way there.”
The school board’s performance committee has been tasked with examining the matter. It next meets 9 a.m. Oct. 16 at the Balas Administration Building.