What Jim Grant remembers about school is that he didn't like it. In looking back, he realized that what he most resented was the pressure to "fit" within the "norms" of his age and grade level. So, when Jim Grant became a new principal, he envisioned a school in which a child's developmental age determined her curriculum, rather than her chronological age and grade-level. In this nongraded school, thought Grant, all kids would succeed. "Kids fail grades, they don't fail school," he explained. "If you put grades together, then kids will fail them, but if you have a continuous progress paradigm, kids don't fail."
Now, as the director of the Society for Developmental Education, Grant uses his passion for multiage education to educate others on ways to best implement this approach in the classroom. His goal is to ensure that multiage education is an enduring reform and not just the latest trend.
It's important, Grant advised, to understand exactly what multiage classrooms are: those that have a minimum of four chronological ages and at least two grades blended; students in true multiage settings stay with their teachers for more than 36 weeks.
Multiage grouping, Grant continued, is a new way of thinking about children. "If you're going to do continuous-progress practices, you may have to let go of some things," such as grade-specific textbooks and reporting attendance by grade levels. About these changes in practice, Grant is emphatic. "If you're being asked to implement a multiage program without giving up grade-level practices—don't do it!"
Grant was equally impassioned when he cautioned educators to "take it slow" when moving to a multiage learning environment.
"This is the 11th Commandment," he declared. "Thou shalt not kill the multiage classroom with impatience." The U.S. educational system, Grant observed, has been "lockstep in a graded system since 1948." To change from that system won't be easy, and it will take approximately one year, he said. "This is the most significant change in education in 148 years," Grant explained. "The slower you go, the more likely it is your program is going to be successful."
A successful multiage program is also one that's built on a broad base of support. Educators must convince parents, the community, and administrators. "You'll have to romance the school board," Grant said.
Making multiage work requires strong leadership, Grant added. "You're going to need a principal who has the guts to grant teachers a moratorium on conflicting mandates, a pricipal who will street-fight for teachers and secure a waiver on standardized grade-level testing, a principal who will grant diplomatic immunity status from local nonchild-centered rules." Teachers must also be exempted from any conflicting educational reform efforts, Grant stated. "A teacher who is using whole language and thematic instruction should not be asked to also do time on task'— it's contrary to what we're talking about."
Despite his advocacy, Grant urged educators to resist the temptation to position multiage education as a panacea. Multiage classrooms, he said, won't produce financial savings, increase test scores, eliminate the need for extra learning time, meet the needs of all students, or make all parents happy.
What multiage grouping will do, if implemented correctly, Grant said, is eliminate the bell curve, unfair competition, and comparative reporting. "What's right is continous-progress practices," Grant maintained. "If you have a lockstep, graded school system, it's called 'get what you can in the time you're with me'—and some kids won't learn enough to be comfortable at the next level. In a multiage classroom, all kids can learn because you have a thing called time flexibility. In a multiage classroom, some kids will take three years to do what others do in two years—and it's okay."