thomas leverett weblog: One-room schoolhouse proposal

Monday, December 08, 2025

One-room schoolhouse proposal

There is no question that the nation's schools are in crisis. By that I mean K-12 public schools; colleges are in crisis too but that's a different crisis. There are many reasons, covid being one of them, being torn apart by culture wars another. But I want to offer a simple, elegant solution.

Let's look at the problem as one of class size. When a class is increasingly closer to thirty than twenty, the teacher has a problem. The problem gets worse as the number of "trouble" students increases. There is a line somewhere around four or five at which, after there is enough trouble, the teacher's ability to teach 25 or thirty students is severely compromised. So, we target class size as the main variable that makes a difference. We can't do anything about the fact that more students these days are suffering from some kind of autism, or mental problems, or unstable home lives, etc. If we assume that unstable home life is a huge part of the problem I believe we are getting closer to looking at the picture accurately, but we can't do much about that either in world of school reform.

The principle behind the one-room schoolhouse proposal is simple: Create a class of mixed-age kids, but small, maybe only twelve. The teacher teaches the older kids directly and supervises the teaching of younger kids, much of which is done by the older kids. So the teacher teaches the younger kids a little, but the older kids a lot, and the older kids teach the younger kids a lot, especially supervising their doing of math and class exercises, writing and reading, etc. The teacher is doing much less of just standing there while a class of 25 is all supposedly doing their math. The teacher is doing more what old-time one-room schoolhouse teachers did, minus the making a fire, shoveling the snow, etc. This would happen experimentally within the school itself, with kids who willingly participated in it or who someone thought they would learn better this way.

The focus would change to what is working in terms of active learning. I can tell you, as a substitute in classes of 25, how much active learning was taking place when I was standing there and everyone was supposedly doing their work. Of course I was a sub, which tends to make that day a holiday. But even when I had a class of my own, for weeks at a time, it was disturbing. And students were generally respectful and typical, even with a fair number of troublemakers.

What I'm saying is that the number in the room is itself a very substantial consideration. A room with twelve or less would be far more productive for the majority of these students and would be a lifesaver for some, who simply can't function in chaos. The one-room model is more like a home setting with its mixed ages, but provides the stability of guidance from multiple directions that the one-teacher, 25-student model simply doesn't offer.

Teachers know when active learning takes place, and administrators should know too. They should be focused on what works. The reason this proposal is elegantly simple is that you can try it for a semester, test everyone, on their own terms and at their own level, and see if it works. I guarantee you that one-room schoolhouses worked fine for generations and can work again for more generations. You have to give it a chance, though.

Within this class of twelve, the teacher will have to be familiar with several curricula. For example, she may have only one nine-year-old, but that nine-year-old will have to be doing all fourth-grade things and may be the only one doing them. The nine-year-old may be in a single day being taught by older kids, >and helping supervise the kindergartners as they play or color. The teacher's challenge is to somehow know all the curricula and coordinate it into the big picture. In the old days, teachers did all this and kept the fire going, protected kids from weather, coordinated transportation, and managed awkward boarding situations. It's a different job description for teachers and doesn't provide for specialization in one level, say 11th-grade English. Not enough time for specialization. What invariably happens is that the older kids become somewhat more responsible for their own education, get much more of what they really want, and the teachers become more responsible for making them more minimally competent in the areas they don't like as much.

Socially, the older kids get bored with a class of only twelve and may want to be back in the big sea where the choices for boyfriend/girlfriend are a little wider. That's ok, let them. Nobody ever said they'd be entirely segregated, or would have to stick to one-room once they were in it. Who is better suited for riding it out? First, those who want to be teachers themselves. Also, those who like twelve and need family-like structure more than they value the wider sea of high-school chaos. You'll find no shortage of takers, I'm convinced. All you have to do is to make them commit to trying it genuinely for at least a semester at a time. And have it set up so that they are actually proceeding through their grade levels successfully, not just minimally but also productively with lots of active learning.

From an administrator's point of view, the problem is money. "If I have one teacher teaching twelve all day, that's far more expensive than having him/her teach a series of classes of 25-30 all day." Yes, twice as expensive, roughly. I can't deny it. But if you look at it from an active-learning perspective, and look across at the entire school from that perspective, it's worth it. You get more money, put it into more teachers first, that's my advice, and if you have to juggle around until you get more active learning, do it. Even lowering class size from 25 to 20 will make a huge difference, I guarantee it. Trying this may be the most successful thing you do, or it may not work at all, I can't predict. All I can tell you is that it's possible; one can make a reasonable model; it's worked before, for generations at a time; some people really love it; and finally, things are in crisis as it is. We have to do something. This is my proposal, based on the couple years I spent as a sub and a lifetime in education.