Three years ago, Newton Public Schools started multi-level classes—in which advanced college prep-level students are in classrooms with honors-level students—to provide expanded learning opportunity to both groups.
According to teachers, multi-level classes have been a multi-level problem. And there’s a petition circulating to stop it.
The pushback
At a School Committee meeting a few weeks ago, Newton South teacher and chair of the Newton South Faculty Council Ryan Normandin presented the petition, signed by all math, science and language teachers as well as a bunch of teachers from other departments.
The petition, Normandin said, “affirms that Newton implemented multi-level classes with no metric for success and no collection of data, and that there’s been no evidence presented that the implementation of these has improved outcomes for any group of students.”
Teachers don’t feel supported in teaching multi-level classes, Normandin continued, and teachers aren’t getting the professional development they were promised when the multi-level class system was launched two years ago.
“These classes have been a major source of stress and low morale among educators while providing no benefit to students,” he said, adding that new teachers have been found crying in closets.
The teachers’ petition does not have any signatures from Newton North High School. Normandin said that’s because teachers at that school don’t feel safe opposing multi-level classes, fearing retaliation from Principal Henry Turner, who helped craft the multi-level classes policy.
“When educators don’t feel safe discussing how to best serve students, something is deeply wrong in that building,” Normandin said.
Turner did not respond to request for comment about that claim.
Student ‘stratification’
To show how complicated multi-level classes can be, Newton South Science teacher Dave Beutel noted that Newton South once had three levels of classes for biology and now has seven different combinations of multi-level offerings for biology. And each moves at a different pace through the curriculum.
“Teacher collaboration is down because of multi-level classes,” Beutel said.
“Teachers of multi-level ACP and Honors classes—these teachers have an awful choice in front of them every day,” Beutel said. “We can focus on the ACP curriculum that will serve much of the class well but leave the honors bored and wanting more or focus on the honors curriculum and have the ACP students feeling lost, behind and frustrated.”
Fellow Newton South teacher Sarah Deitch said she was open to the idea of multi-level classes as a way to expand learning opportunity as the district re-opened its schools post-pandemic. But she hasn’t liked the results.
“It creates stratification within the class,” Deitch said. “Students are always comparing themselves to each other. That’s sort of part of the growing up process. But suddenly we’ve created a situation where there’s a clear label of who is better than somebody else.”
Quick vs. careful?
District leadership is examining the impacts of multi-level classes and is expected to release findings in the spring.
But at the school committee’s next meeting on Nov. 18, Newton parent Patrick Song spoke, noting the petition had garnered more than 400 signatures opposing multi-level classes and calling on the district to cut multi-level classes sooner rather than later.
“There should be no delay. The teachers have spoken, and so have the parents,” Song said.
Normandin also spoke at that meeting, reminding the committee that high school courses are determined between November and January, so waiting for findings to be released would mean multi-level classes for at least another year.
And this Monday, Normandin appeared in front of the committee again to urge quick action in fixing the multi-level classroom problem.
“While I appreciate the desire to solve the problem correctly rather than quickly—in stark contrast to how multi-level was initially implemented—in this case I don’t believe these things are mutually exclusive.”
And, Normandin noted, multi-level classes were launched at the same time as changes in scheduling, grading policy and homework expectations.
“Whatever the central admin team finds, good or bad, it’s going to be impossible to tease apart which effects were caused by which changes,” he said.