Room to Grow

Kindergarten threw Chloe Cohen for something of a loop. For the first three months, she would sob as soon as her father was out of sight. Then tears flowed every time her teacher, Jane Raphael, stepped away.

Raphael recounts those days to highlight how far Chloe, now a confident first-grader, has come. Chloe shows a visitor her drawing of a turtle and is looking forward to campaigning next year for class president when--unlike the vast majority of students who have to switch teachers each year--she will return for a third stint in Raphael’s multi-age classroom at Wonderland Avenue School in Laurel Canyon.

Some of the blossoming, no doubt, was due simply to maturation. But Raphael--whose students this year include first- and second-graders--believes that Chloe also benefited from the comfort she drew from being with her and with many of her classmates from last year.

“For her to be given the room to be who she is, even if it’s shy, and to be with many of the same friends,” some of them older, has helped her to “anticipate that over time she can move into bigger shoes” and be a leader, Raphael said.

Being able to help students make such leaps socially and emotionally is one of the reasons Raphael and the other primary grade teachers at Wonderland--a tiny, 250-student elementary school tucked into a leafy reach of Laurel Canyon--frequently give for organizing most of their classes according to the multi-age concept.

Growing in number nationwide--and growing fastest of all in California--multi-age classrooms enable students who vary in chronological age by two or three years to be grouped together and to spend several years bonding with a single teacher.

Proponents say such arrangements bear fruit not just socially, for students such as Chloe, but academically as well because the instructors seek to capitalize on a major challenge faced by teachers of young children: the fact that students who are the same age can vary dramatically in other ways.

Young children mature in fits and starts, and most early childhood experts agree that until age 8, children develop according to their own internal timetable.

Grouping them across grade levels provides flexibility that can allow an innovative teacher to better meet each child’s individual academic needs, multi-age proponents say. So the 5-year-old who is ready to read can be taught alongside first-graders, and the second-grader who is still having trouble counting can find a place among the younger students. Proponents also say children make “continuous progress” when their social and academic maturation is not interrupted by periodically having to get to know a new teacher and a new set of friends.

Although the child-centered philosophy that supports the approach has been around since the 1960s, multi-age classrooms really started gaining attention and fans among educators in the mid- to late-1980s. More recently, policymakers in Oregon, Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky--where they were a key element in the state’s much-touted school reform effort--have given them a boost.

For the past two years, California’s Department of Education has supported a statewide network of educators interested in multi-age classrooms. The idea has gained favor in several Orange County school systems and the giant Los Angeles Unified School District, which has multi-age classrooms in more than two dozen of its 420 elementary schools.

Yet backers of multi-age learning worry that the movement may falter in the face of the current drive nationally to set statewide, grade-by-grade academic standards and require standardized tests to determine whether students are measuring up.

Those tests, they say, will foster unhealthy competition instead of cooperation among students, and create pressure among teachers and administrators to make sure, for example, that their first-graders measure up by test time, rather than giving them several years during which they develop at their own pace.

Such standards are being developed in most states and they are “going to be the undoing of multi-age classrooms,” fears Jim Grant, a New Hampshire education consultant who heads a nationwide multi-age network.

“I’m absolutely in favor of grade-level standards, but I also acknowledge that some children will take a different amount of time to reach the standards than other kids.”

Some parents also worry that the emphasis in multi-age classrooms on social development restricts the more academically able students. In fact, failing to address such parental concerns about academic rigor upfront is often seen as the major reason the multi-age approach hasn’t spread more quickly.

On the question of academic progress, the conclusions are mixed.

Dutch researcher Simon Veenman examined 56 studies of such classrooms in 12 countries and, in an article published last year in the Journal of Educational Research, concluded that there was no measurable difference in either social or academic development when compared to students in traditional classrooms.

But researchers who support the multi-age concept disputed Veenman’s conclusion, saying he had failed to consider many studies that actually support their claims of higher achievement and more positive feelings about school and peers.

Even proponents of multi-age classrooms admit, however, that only highly skilled teachers willing to work extra hard can realize the potential benefits--socially or academically. And they worry that if the movement grows too rapidly it could lead to failures.

“It’s nothing to go into lightly, though I personally like it better [than standard classroom groupings] when it works well,” said Bruce Miller, a researcher at the Northwest Regional Education Lab in Portland, Ore., and author of “Children at the Center: Implementing the Multiage Classroom.”

“It demands of the teachers better organizational skills, more time and commitment, but once it gets going and becomes routine . . . the pressure relaxes a little bit.”

Wonderland has had multi-age classrooms for almost five years, and the teachers there say they are starting to breathe a little easier. They point to two important lessons they’ve learned along the way: that the support of parents is essential and that teachers have to help one another get over the hurdles.

Deborah Gayle, whose class this year includes third- and fourth-graders, was ready to give up during the first year because of the workload. But now she preaches the gospel as only a convert can.

Gayle cites the example of a student she had for three years who could not read in the first or second grade. She told the boy’s mother what she should do over the summer after the second grade to help him. And that fall, Gayle was stunned when she heard him reading the children’s classic “Charlotte’s Web.”

In a traditionally structured school, such a student “might have gotten lost,” Gayle said. But she was able to keep track of him and develop a relationship with his parents. She also kept challenging him--albeit in a way that might not show up immediately on a standardized test.

“The standard I hold in here is to really push them to their limit,” Gayle said.

Claire Willenson, a parent of a first-grader in Raphael’s class, said she wasn’t worried about how well her son, Evan, would do academically but wanted to make sure he gained confidence socially--and he has.

As a first-grader “he bonded with three or four second-graders and . . . he started speaking up more in class, modeling their confidence and participation,” Willenson said.

That’s not something Raphael, a highly regarded mentor teacher for the district, leaves to chance. She teams students up in math, for example, and for writing stories or working on art projects. She has daily “buzz groups” during which students can chat with anyone they choose on a topic she specifies. And she has a daily meeting, in which students offer suggestions and speak up about what is on their minds.

During one such session recently, it was Chloe, still sitting by Raphael’s side in the circle on the floor, who piped up with a suggestion for how taking attendance might be done more efficiently.

And Raphael, who has seen Chloe emerge as a classroom leader over the past 18 months, did not even blink.