SK> ->    NEWSWEEK Magazine reports on the return to multi-age
SK> -> classrooms (Leslie and Halpert, 12/6).  "Call it Grade
SK> -> Conflation.  Spurred by reform proposals around the nation,
SK> -> educators are discarding traditional age groupings.  Instead,
SK> -> they are once again turning to multi-age classrooms," 
SK> ->    According to NEWSWEEK, contemporary multi-age classrooms are
SK> -> more akin to the "popular but flawed open-classroom experiments of
SK> -> the late 1960s" than they are to the one-room schoolhouses of
SK> -> yesteryear.  The theory holds that instruction can be more self-
SK> -> paced in multi-age classrooms, 
    I've _seen_ 8th-grade classrooms where the reading level varied from 
second to sixth grade.  
    I'd call "multi-age classrooms" an impossible burden on teachers by the 
time kids reached age 10.  Some of the kids in the classroom would still be 
barely able to read and add, while others were doing 8th-grade work.
SK> ->    Critics lambaste the concept as too chaotic, reports
SK> -> NEWSWEEK.  "Kids everywhere running around," is how one Ky.
SK> -> parent describes multi-age classrooms.  But proponents are not
SK> -> deterred.  "We are building this from the ground up," said Linda
SK> -> Edin, a teacher at Landsdowne Elementary School in Lexington, Ky.
    Give it a few years.
    Open classrooms were a popular fad once, too, before they had a few years 
for their failings to get undeniable.
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