Pacing guides

The claim

Pacing guides are ineffective when dealing with students with disabilities.

The facts

Teachers today often face significant amounts of pressure from school districts to cover specific material in order to provide students with the best opportunity to succeed in standardized tests on specific subjects. This pressure is often stressful and even overly demanding for teachers to follow, especially with a wide range of student learning abilities. One specific tool used throughout classrooms across the country and worldwide is Pacing guides.

Pacing guides are standardized lists for planning learning objects into units. They also assign specific amounts of time to be spent on specific learning objectives, often specifying number of days or even hours and minutes in some circumstances. Different school settings have different ways of forming of these pacing guides; however, the majority of pacing guides are formed through a collaborative effort amongst teachers, counselors, and even administrative personnel. It is through this collaboration between professionals that pacing guides should be developmentally and age appropriate and encourage the input of teachers in the classroom. These pacing guides should typically be used by all teachers teaching the same subjects in a school in order to assure that all students are learning the same material.

Although pacing guides are widely used throughout school systems, they spark some controversy as to how effective they actually are. Do they hurt students and teachers more than they help? Much of the criticism of pacing guides begins with the issue of pressuring teachers and students to cover everything required in the suggested amount of time. This restricted amount of time brings about concern for teachers because, as previously discussed, students learn at different rates. Students with disabilities are of specific concern for these pacing guides: Because these students may struggle to master the material as quickly as their typically developing peers, remediation of instruction is often deemed necessary.

The following are some claims, positive and negative, associated with pacing guides that are described in educational research. It should be noted that these are just observations from the literature and not necessarily applicable in all cases.

Positives of pacing guides

• group learning objectives into units for evaluation
• allocate time to each unit
• create a sequence of units in calendar format
• structure classroom curriculum
• cover material included in end-of-grade tests
• give students a structured outline of the class for reference
• through collaboration, highlight the most important material in subjects
• well thought out and organized
• make lesson planning easier on teachers

Negatives of pacing guides

• time restrictive
• provide no room for leeway
• too rigid
• do not consider different learning rates
• may not allow time for remediation
• take away from creativity — both student and teacher

Conclusion

According to the research, the claim appears to be fiction, if pacing guides are implemented appropriately in the classroom. When teaching students with learning difficulties, remediation is a vital part of student mastery of material. Therefore, pacing guides can be appropriate only when they include time for remediation. Although not all students will need this remediation, it is imperative that students with difficulties get this extra attention to detail in order to learn specific material. During this remediation time, alternative assignments can be given to the students who do not need the remediation, allowing them to still be active in the classroom and perhaps even take part in peer tutoring.

In order to be effective, pacing guides also need to be well organized and detailed, while still leaving room for change, restructuring, and creativity on the part of both teacher and student. Teacher creativity is vital for job satisfaction and students should be encouraged to be creative with their work. Restructuring should also be a key aspect to an effective pacing guide because there are times when some material will not appeal to students as much as other material. Pacing guides should be able to incorporate this variable by being adaptable to allow for more time on topics of interest while sticking to material appropriate in the curriculum.

Although certainly not a foolproof tool, pacing guides can be very effective in classrooms, even those with students with disabilities. It is critical, however, that these guides are appropriately formed and implemented, taking into consideration the different learning rates of students. Overall, it may be difficult and stressful for teachers to use pacing guides, but it is not impossible and should be considered as a potentially valuable resource.