From the Dec. 4, 1996 Daily Report Card:
-> *5   ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE:  ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA
->    NEWSWEEK Magazine reports on the return to multi-age
-> classrooms (Leslie and Halpert, 12/6).  "Call it Grade
-> Conflation.  Spurred by reform proposals around the nation,
-> educators are discarding traditional age groupings.  Instead,
-> they are once again turning to multi-age classrooms," writes the
-> magazine.
->    For example, Ky. state law mandates that every school in the
-> state offer multi-age classes for children age 5 to 9.  In
-> Cincinnati, school officials plan to convert all classes from K
-> through 10th grade to multi-age classrooms by 2001, writes the
-> magazine.
->    According to NEWSWEEK, contemporary multi-age classrooms are
-> more akin to the "popular but flawed open-classroom experiments of
-> the late 1960s" than they are to the one-room schoolhouses of
-> yesteryear.  The theory holds that instruction can be more self-
-> paced in multi-age classrooms, with children moving from easier to
-> more difficult material quicker than if they had to wait to be
-> promoted to the next grade.
->    Critics lambaste the concept as too chaotic, reports
-> NEWSWEEK.  "Kids everywhere running around," is how one Ky.
-> parent describes multi-age classrooms.  But proponents are not
-> deterred.  "We are building this from the ground up," said Linda
-> Edin, a teacher at Landsdowne Elementary School in Lexington, Ky.
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