Thinking About Conversions

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Design Matters Getting the Numbers Downand
the Time Up

• Small Schools Project
• University of Washington
• smallschoolsproject.org

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• School design plays a critical role in
  determining how well students learn and how well
  teachers are able to do their work.
• But design decisions about the use of time
• are rarely seen in that light.
• While they are often viewed as being as certain
  as the sun rising every day in the eastern sky,
  key scheduling decisions are almost always
  constrained by convention and history.

Different choices can yield dramatically
different teaching and learning opportunities.
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• This presentation considers the impact of
  scheduling decisions that affect
• the student load that a teacher has that is,
  the number of students a teacher is responsible
  for at any one time and over a period of years

and the corresponding impact on the amount of
contact time teachers have with the same students.
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Student Load
450 students
150 students in a semester
25 students
300 students
150 students in 1 year
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Student Load
1800
1200
600
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Student Load
1800
1200
Some small schools have a teacher load of 50
students a year
600
300
Yr-long, Integrated
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Student Load
1800
1200
600
300
150
Looping/ Multi-age
Yr-long, Integrated
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Student Load
Looping or Multi-age (2 yrs)
Yr-long, Integrated
Trimester Semester Yr-long
150 100
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Student Load
Looping or Multi-age (2 yrs)
Yr-long, Integrated
Trimester Semester Yr-long
150 100
The most effective small schools use one or both
of these design elements to reduce student load
for teachers.
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Minutes per student
150 hrs 1 credit (in WA) 150 hrs 9000 minutes
20 minutes per student
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Minutes per student
4x
8x
12x
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Minutes per student
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Minutes per student
2x
8x
16x
24x
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Student Load
Contact Time
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Student Load and Contact Time Relationship
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• Getting student numbers down
• and contact time
• with fewer students up
• is a result of intentional design decisions
• driven by a schools values and priorities.

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Edward Tufte The Visual Representation of
Quantitative Information (1983) Envisioning
Information (1990) Visual Explanations (1997)
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