Is Elementary-School Departmentalization Effective?

            In this National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, Roland Fryer (Harvard University) describes his two-year study of the efficacy of Houston Public Schools elementary teachers specializing in particular subjects. Twenty-five schools formed the control group and continued with traditional self-contained classes. Another 25 schools departmentalized using two different configurations for the 2-4 teachers at each grade level: (a) one teacher teaching reading/social studies, another teaching math/science; or (b) three teachers splitting up reading, math, and science/social studies. Principals decided which subject(s) teachers taught based on their sense of their strongest area(s). Students remained with the same classmates for all subjects.

As an economist, Fryer is familiar with the history of specialization in industry, including Henry Ford’s 1913 introduction of the assembly line to produce the Model T, which reduced the time it took to produce one car from 750 minutes to 93 minutes. In his classic economic treatise, The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith looked at pin factories in 18^th-century England and found dramatic increases in productivity when individual workers were organized to specialize in discrete tasks.

            “The basic economics is intuitive,” says Fryer. “Specializing in the production of a subset of the tasks necessary to produce a final output allows workers to gain efficiency in that task.” Adam Smith believed there were three reasons for this:

-   Dividing a larger task into smaller tasks allows each worker to gain greater skill in his or her designated work.

-   Reducing the number of tasks each worker must manage reduces transition time from one task to the next.

-   Individual workers can focus their full attention on a few simple tasks, which increases the likelihood of technological innovation.

Similar advantages would seem to apply to elementary teachers specializing in particular subjects rather than trying to teach everything:

-   More time to master subject-specific content and pedagogy and stay on top of developments in that field;

-   Fewer lesson plans to write and therefore more time to invest in quality planning;

-   Greater teacher productivity by getting teachers working in areas in which they are most experienced and competent;

-   Preparing students for middle and high schools, which are almost always departmentalized;

-   Less teacher attrition because of a reduced workload and less stress from teaching unfamiliar subjects.

All these reasons make teacher specialization an appealing option for improving student achievement, without having to make staffing changes and spend additional money.

“But pupils are not pins,” says Fryer, “and the production of human capital is far more complex than assembling automobiles. Whether specialization can increase productivity in schools is an important open question in the design of primary and secondary schooling.” He notes that there are wide variations in the instructional models used in the 34 OECD countries, with only ten using specialization at the elementary level and six countries (Austria, Hungary, Norway, Portugal, Latvia, and Israel) using looping, with teachers working with the same students for at least three years.

            What did Fryer’s study show? That elementary departmentalization is “surprisingly inconsistent with the positive effect of specialization typically known to economists,” he says. In the first year of the experiment, students in departmentalized classes did slightly worse in reading and math compared to students in control schools. “Students who might be particularly vulnerable – such as those enrolled in special education or those who are taught by inexperienced teachers – demonstrated particularly negative impacts of treatment, “ says Fryer. In addition, students in treatment schools were more likely to exhibit problem behaviors and had lower school attendance.

            What was going on here? To get more details, Fryer administered a questionnaire to teachers and found that their responses to items on lesson planning, relationships with students, enjoyment of teaching, and teaching strategies were very similar between treatment and control schools, with one exception: departmentalized teachers were significantly less likely to report that they provided tailored instruction to their students.

The trade-off is clear: the more teachers specialize, the more difficult it is for them to gear instruction to individual student needs. Fryer reports some possible reasons from other research:

-   Teachers working with a larger number of students have less time to get to know and understand individual students’ personalities and learning needs.

-   When students have more transitions from class to class during the day, it’s more difficult for teachers to know each child’s emotional state and make differentiated judgments on the best pedagogy and interpersonal approach.

-   Increased transitions reduce instructional time.

-   Transitions and dealing with more students make classroom management more challenging for teachers.

“Empirically,” Fryer concludes, “I find that teacher specialization, if anything, decreases student achievement, decreases student attendance, and increases student behavioral problems… These results provide a cautionary tale about the potential productivity benefits of the division of labor when applied to human capital development.”

“The ‘Pupil Factory’: Specialization and the Production of Human Capital in Schools” by Roland Fryer, Jr., a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, April 2016, available at http://www.nber.org/papers/w22205 with free registration; Fryer can be reached at Rolandfryer@edlabs.harvard.edu.

(The article summary above comes from Issue #640 of The Marshall Memo, an EXCELLENT resource for educators.)