ORGANIZATIONAL CONSTRAINTS ON THE FORMATION OF ELEMENTARY-SCHOOL CLASSES

This study describes how principals assign teachers and students to si ngle-grade and combination classes. Combination classes are a distinct type of multigrade class formed as a result of enrollment imbalances or shortages in which students from two or more adjacent grade levels are taught for most or all of the day by a single teacher. Ninety prin cipals from 13 school districts were interviewed by phone about their procedures for allocating teachers and students to classes. Fifty-nine principals managed multitrack calendar schools, a form of year-round schooling in which three or four independent groups of teachers and st udents rotate attendance intervals and largely operate on different sc hedules; 31 principals managed traditional or single-track calendar sc hools. Notes taken during the interviews were tabulated to form the ma in database of the study. Compared to student assignment procedures in single-grade classes, the strategies used by the principals included more homogeneous ability assignment and placement of more students con sidered independent workers in combination classes. More generally, a case is made that multitrack calendars reduce principals' flexibility to make purposive decisions about student assignment to classrooms and , therefore, reduce or remove altogether a school's ability to manipul ate an important factor in classroom teaching and learning, namely, th e compositional nature of classrooms.