Yesterday at Asbury Park’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, every teacher wore black. They were protesting—and mourning—the decision, either by principal Perry Medina or Superintendent Rashawn Adams, to abruptly change the school schedule so the school’s 300 students, grades 6-8, will alternate reading and math classes. Today students will have instruction in reading for an extended period. Tomorrow they have math. This is sometimes called an  “A/B” schedule, or “block scheduling.”

How do MLK teachers feel about this shift, abruptly announced on Friday with a starting-date of this past Monday?

They are angry and worried about their students. I was told this was not a protest organized by the local teachers union but one that sprung up organically over the weekend. One source told me the announcement “triggered texting and phone calls” and a consensus to wear black “in protest of the new schedule.”

What’s their problem? Block scheduling  is pretty common in high schools and even some middle schools. But it has its drawbacks because younger students need daily instruction in core academic subjects if they are to stay on grade-level. In 2017 Christopher Tienken, an associate professor of education administration at Seton Hall University,, told the Asbury Park Press that block scheduling is “used naturally in most elementary schools for English language arts and math” because students had each of those two classes each day for longer periods to “achieve deeper learning.”

But Tienken is describing a more typical block schedule. For instance, at College Achieve Asbury Park, where students outcomes far exceed district outcomes, students have at two periods for reading and two periods of STEM each day. In Asbury Park students will have those core subjects not every day for extended periods but every other day for longer periods. One week they’ll have math only two days a week, the next week they’ll have reading only two days a week.  

How will that affect student learning?

That’s unclear but MLK Upper Elementary students already have steep challenges. Currently, according to the state database, fewer than 10% of sixth. seventh. and eighth-grade students reach proficiency in both reading and math. (The data field is blank except for an asterisk because the state redacts data when proficiency levels are below 10%.)

Also, teachers need training to teach for longer periods. An additional source says there has been none.

In addition over 30% of MLK students are “chronically absent,” missing more than 10% of school days. One of the downsides of block scheduling, noted here, is that students who are absent miss two days of math or reading “because classes are longer; thus, missing one lesson on a given day may be equivalent to missing two.”

All this for $33,847 per student per year. Sure, NJ taxpayers can gripe but the real victims here are the children of Asbury Park.