Hodgkins Elementary School Creates Environment With No Grades, No Grade Levels

At a Denver area elementary school, students are organized into classes in an unconventional manner -- they are arranged by what they know, not their age or mandatory grade level.

All Hodgkins Elementary School students learn at their own pace and are grouped together for specific lessons based on their skills in that area, CNN reports.

The school has no grades or grade levels.

Is this a good model? Share your opinion in the comments section below.

WATCH:

Comments

[43yearsateacher]

09:41 PM on 05/05/2011

And so we regress to 1972, and the land of Excellent, Satisfactory, and Limited Achievement. Another idea that didin't work. Too much of what we are rediscovering, the next latest and greatest thing, was proposed back in the 20's and 30's...and didn't work then. And here comes the "billionaires boy's clubs" trying to recycle outdated ideas, and then trying to build different kinds of schools, and finally trying to destroy public education entirely by privatizing it with charter schools that are neither any better or even accountable. And when all that didn't work they tanked the economy and fired lots and lots of the teachers. If this wasn't such a sad situation it would be laughable.

If folks don't quit being so d@mn clueless about what is really going on in this country, we're not going to HAVE public schools, at all.

[Sharyn Payne]

02:18 PM on 05/04/2011

Truly no child left behind....as long as all children progress and end up with a complete middle school education. Timing, class name, etc I guess are irrelevant...just labels. The teachers could be rated on the basis of how many children achieve their elementary/middle school benchmarks and test/rank similiar or above other children with traditional school processes.

[TazoWolf]

08:13 PM on 05/04/2011

But you're still talking about "teaching to the test."

[Sharyn Payne]

09:10 AM on 05/05/2011

Different method, same outcome or better. Unless you have a better method of measurement to offer, that's all they have right now...TESTS. Age/Grade/Knowledge/Brain Processing/Appropriate tests.

[Eric Mann]

01:44 PM on 05/04/2011

Its things like this that so-called "education reformers" can't stand seeing. How can you hold teachers accountable-in their terms meaning test results. How can you decide if the school made AYP if there are no defined grade levels to base testing on?

I personally would LOVE to teach in a progressive school like this. But knowing the current climate of testocracy, I don't see them spreading.

[Sabrina Meras]

02:23 AM on 05/06/2011

well parents like me would love to have some real reform in school!! all this testing is taking away from the actual learning! teachers should be held accountable so we need to figure something out because things are not working theway they are now

[Eric Mann]

08:16 AM on 05/06/2011

In order to hold teachers accountable, you have to define what they are accountable FOR. Is a teacher's job to make sure a student learns, or that the environment exists where students learn? Is their job to make students successful, or to give the students plentiful and varied opportunites to succeed. It used to be that the latter statements were what we looked at teachers to do, but lately the former statements are what are being used for the job description.

At the end of the day, when you are working with people-even children- (or, ESPECIALLY children depending on the issue) it is hard to hold the person totally accountable. Are doctors held accountable if their patients die from bad health? No-of course they are not. All the doctor can do is work with that patient and set them up for successful living, but the person must make the choices to follow the doctor's advice, take their perscriptions, etc...Teachers are like that. Please, PLEASE hold me accountable for creating an environment where a child learns. But you cannot hold me accountable if the child learns or not any more than you hold the parents or my school administration. I'll take my fair share of the responisbility, but that isn't 100%.

[moldndecay]

01:28 PM on 05/04/2011

Edward Demmings espoused this 60 years ago. Im sure there were others before him.

And I wish this was my school when I was in elementary school. I got so boooooooored waiting for the other kids to finish their reading I became a disruptive force, walking around, talking to other kids, not paying attention.

Then the teacher would yell at me for not paying attention, Id tell her I was bored, and she would answer that it was discourteous to not listen closely while Billy stuttered and stammered in reading his paragraph of the book that I had already read in its entirety.

In the case of Tony Robbins, he was called gifted for pre-reading the books, me, I was a troublemaker.

[J0E1]

10:45 AM on 05/04/2011

So... at what point do they enter Middle School?  If we go by what they know, we are going to have kids in 6th grade ranging from 8 (the gifted) to 15 (the not so much) and everywhere in between lol.  What a terrible idea.

[jay1975]

10:18 AM on 05/04/2011

So if this trend were to be expanded into the high schools, how would these kids get into college. This is nothing more than trying to make everyone special, which in turn makes everyone mediocre. We, as a nation, have become so weak that we now hold in contempt competition. The sad fact is that not everyone is a genius and some people really are meant to be followers while others are meant to be leaders. By eliminating any real means of tracking progress and achievement, we are essentially making sure that everyone is a follower.

[maab76]

10:39 AM on 05/04/2011

I would like more information on the current achievement levels of the students at this school: their ages, achievement scores, class size, etc. There is an organizational method of using continuous progress which is highly successful because it permits each student to achieve as much as motivation and ability permit. Even a small class with achievement ranges of up to 6 years can benefit from this kind of project. Don't diss this program until you know HOW it actually operates and how skilled the teachers are in guiding it May I remind you that "Teaching is the Guidance of Learning Activities."

[Insanity rules]

12:09 PM on 05/04/2011

YES! People are tied to the grade levels as a way to control the students not because it's the best way to teach.

[Hlynn]

10:14 AM on 05/04/2011

"Strong leadership and community support"--well, that's what *all* schools need. There obviously are grades, since the teacher in the video told students they earned 100 on a test.

Since there are no grade levels, I wonder how students take state tests, which are separated by grade. If there are no specific grades, how do they know which test to take? And, if there are no grades, how are scores reported for AYP categories and aggregates?

We do something like this in our school, although we definitely do have grade levels. Teachers of one grade (ex: all fourth grade teachers) split their classes into those who need more help and those who need on or above level instruction. Then, they split the students by ability and each teaches a group based on level of the students' math skills. It's working well and we're going to start doing that with reading next year. The students can move from group to group depending on their ability on that skill level--for example some are good at fractions but weak in geometry--so the students are rarely in all "high" or "low" groups each time. Since there is so much back-and-forth, it lessens their anxiety and they seem to learn more. Plus, it helps teachers get to know all the students, not just homeroom students.

[TINA ANDRES]

09:52 AM on 05/04/2011

This is a great model. I am so tired of trying to teach kids functioning anywhere between a second grade to a tenth grade level in a sixth grade class of 40 students. The worst part is that I am told by my school district and the state that I must teach grade level standards, no more and no less. Have you ever tried to teach pre-algebra to kids who never learned what a fraction actually is? Many schools in California have a policy that no child will be graded "exceeds standards" because teachers do not teach anything above the standards. Kids on the high and low end are getting the shaft in our current system. Wow, a school is actually trying to do what is best for kids. Bravo to them!

[lensman3]

09:45 AM on 05/04/2011

This is a bad idea grade wise. I went to a college that had pass-fail grades. When those grades transfered to another university the pass became a D grade. They college finally went to pass-D-fail. That way the pass became at least a C grade.

Works if you stay in the same school, but fails when you change schools.

Bad idea.

[dloitz]

02:46 PM on 05/05/2011

This is a silly remark! You should of talked to you college...I went to a school with Pass/ fail and have had no problem. It is systemic program not one of grades.

[lensman3]

10:33 AM on 05/06/2011

The problem is not within a single school. It is transferring the grades BETWEEN schools. A pass was a D grade to them.

[Kevin Zielke]

06:52 AM on 05/04/2011

This seems like a great model for students. I remember reading adult level novels in 6th grade and felt ridiculous doing the things they assigned in class. This sort of model would have been great.

But I am curious as to how this would work if this model is implemented into a high school curriculum. Would the average age of graduation fluctuate more or stay on a certain standard. I'd also make sure that while kids are learning at the level and pace that's right for them the teachers should be making sure they advance at a proper level. Maybe try to keep it at least to the age standard such as needing to be at least a level 5 (if that means fifth grade) by the end of what is normally considered their 5th grade year.

[mlaiuppa]

03:29 AM on 05/04/2011

That's an excellent model. It is what school reform should be.

I suggested as much in my first master's thesis, written 30 years ago.

[Gem Mayers]

11:52 PM on 05/03/2011

Love it! Simple as that.

[BonnieJGordon]

09:55 PM on 05/03/2011

It seems like a terrific model, in fact, fostering what's known in the trade as intrinsic motivation - learning for learning's sake, and not to get good grades. It doesn't surprise me at all that discipline problems have been reduced. But from the look of the report, this school is clearly a well-funded suburban school, and not a disastrously under-resourced inner-city school. Although I think that it's exactly the urban schools that could benefit most from this approach, the problem of teacher and administrative turnover is a crucial one.

[Jenn May]

07:47 PM on 05/03/2011

When I start to teach, I want to teach in a school like this. I hope this movement continues to gain momentum!

[genrel1248]

07:25 PM on 05/03/2011

Wow! Finally an idea that makes sense.