About Student-Choice

What if students could choose their course of study?  Is offering choice realistic or sensible for K-12 students? How would you even begin?

Many K-12 schools have implemented programs in which students have choice in their exploration.  Passion projects are a great example of choice.  Students select a topic to research and design a solution or product centered around their interest.

In today’s world, choice is an amazing motivator.  Students are more engaged in learning when they have choice over what they study.  Yes, yes, I hear your concerns.  Allow choice in schools?  You’re opening the door for mayhem!  Chaos! It will be anarchy!

Hear me out. Much of what we’re teaching is antiquated. We all know that, and we must accept it as truth.  I asked a group of fifth graders, “Does how we teach need to change?”

One student responded with, “Ms. Smith, we don’t make cars like we did in 1950.  Why should school be the same?”  Oh, from the mouths of babes.  So obvious and so on point.  

And yet, change can be so hard.  When we let go of the reins, we worry about the consequences.

How can we trust students to select courses? Students are too young to make an important choice such as this.  How will they learn what they need to know in life?

My suggestion is to open the door and try allowing choice on a small scale to see the impact.  My colleagues and I believed strongly in the power of student choice when we designed our multidisciplinary program for middle schoolers. Here’s how we approached the challenge.

When we started designing the program, we knew from the start that we wanted students to select their courses.  Yet we were unsure how to create a system in which students could self-select courses and still divide the population into our 23 courses fairly evenly.  We knew certain course descriptions would be more popular.  Imagine a course on the history of doughnuts being offered to a 400 student middle school.  

We also did not want students to gravitate only to courses in one discipline. We wanted students to branch out and try new things, learn new information, and have new experiences.  For a student devoted to STEM, that meant trying some courses in Arts or Humanities.  

So we asked our tech department to create a rating system.  Students would rate all 20+ courses offered with a 5 star rating system.  We guaranteed that students would be placed in courses that they rated from a 3-5.  We had the computer sort students into the classes.  However, this concept can be used without its own online platform–even paper selections would work.  

Of course, students had to be instructed on rating courses with a star system.  We explained Netflix and restaurant ratings to help guide them.  We sent instructions to parents in addition to explaining to students in school.  

Our first year, some students were confused and improperly rated courses.  We allowed them to re-select and adjust the course lists.  However, in years following, we ran a more rigid explanation and did not allow students to adjust for their errors.

By running this type of selection, we could place students in a variety of courses if they were rated high on the students’ list.  Of course, we had students (and parents) try to game the system.  Students selected only two courses as 5s, and the remaining courses they rated as 1.  The first year, their gaming was successful.  After that, we redesigned the algorithm.  

We decided students should be permitted to rate courses as a 1 or 2, but we limited the number of courses they could rate this low to two per category.  We found this to be helpful.  Because our program was cross-grade level (grades 5-8), we also set our parameters to have specific gender and grade level ratios. For example, we did not want one fifth grade girl with an entire class of eighth graders.

So, we created student-choice by the rating system.  

Did we have complaints?

Yes, we did.  Some students did not end up in classes with friends.  Some were not sure they would like the class after the first week.  Some parents wanted their child to be in two STEM despite our limitations.

We held firm with the course assignments and did not move any students.  

What was end the result?

Students were more engaged in their courses because they took ownership in the selection.  They worked harder to solve problems, were excited to share their projects, and collaborated excitedly across grade levels.

But, don’t take my word for it, try choice in your school.