Redesigning the high school schedule to expand access and outcomes

Taunton Public Schools — Taunton, Massachusetts

12 Schools | 538 Teachers | 7,905 Students | 92.5% Graduation Rate

Context & Background

Taunton Public Schools serves a diverse community in southeastern Massachusetts, enrolling 7,905 students across 12 schools, including Taunton High School—home to grades 8 through 12. With a 92.5% graduation rate and long-standing community pride, the high school is central to the district’s identity.

For more than two decades, Taunton High School operated on a 4×4 block schedule implemented in 1996. Over time, however, school and district leaders began to question whether the schedule still supported strong instruction, access to advanced and rigorous coursework, and student postsecondary readiness.

Faced with the reality of declining accountability ratings and accreditation challenges, school leaders began to evaluate whether the schedule was helping or hurting student performance. Superintendent John Cabral saw that the district’s only high school needed wholesale transformation to provide students the best education possible and the ability to succeed in whatever path they choose after graduation.

“We knew we needed to take a close look at the schedule to make sure we were giving students the best possible opportunities,” Cabral explained.

The Challenge: Growing enrollment and lagging opportunities

Student enrollment had jumped by 60% since block scheduling was introduced. Along with enrollment, course offerings had expanded, class sizes had ballooned, and the school was critically short on space. . 

• Class sections increased from 600 to more than 1,100
• Career and technical education (CTE) programs expanded from 1 to 7
• Advanced Placement (AP) course offerings grew from 5 to 19
• The school faced increasing space constraints

What’s more, it was clear that the approach to scheduling along with growing pains was causing material disruptions in course sequencing.

It was time for a new approach to scheduling in order to keep pace with student needs and program expansion. 

The Solution: A data-driven approach to change

Block scheduling is generally wildly popular with teachers and parents. Superintendent Cabral needed data to make the case for a switch. He also needed help with stakeholder engagement and with the massive and daunting task of creating a brand new schedule.

Cabral turned to Resource Analytics by Abl, a BetterLesson company – now Integrated Insights – to analyze time, courses and outcomes and uncover gaps and roadblocks that were hampering student success.

Our approach uncovered a number of scheduling inefficiencies that were impacting instructional time and student outcomes. For example: in most cases, teachers used only about half of an 87-minute block for instruction, with the remainder serving as a de facto study hall. 

Even more concerning, the analysis highlighted what Cabral and school leaders were already concerned about — interrupted course sequencing that was naturally affecting both test scores and individual student success.

How block scheduling was blocking student outcomes

Because core courses were a semester long and scheduling was so difficult, many students would take English 1 in the fall of their freshman year, but English 2 didn’t happen until the spring of their sophomore year. Meanwhile, the state assessment in English happened somewhere in between. The same disjointed sequence applied to math and world languages. Similarly, most AP courses were in the fall of the school year; however, the College Board administers AP exams in late spring.

Timeline Example:

• 9th Grade Semester 1: English 1
• 9th Grade Semester 2: [Gap – no English]
• 10th Grade Semester 1: State Assessment
• 10th Grade Semester 2: English 2

12 month gap in English Instruction

Being able to paint the picture so clearly with the analytics we provided helped Superintendent Cabral with stakeholder buy-in. “They could see our goal was to provide students with more opportunities,” Cabral said. “No parent of a high schooler wants their students to go three semesters without a math class.”

Schedule design to prepare students for postsecondary success

The school began with a revised mission: to provide a safe and secure learning environment; to provide access and opportunities for all students; and to prepare students for postsecondary success, no matter what that looked like for each student.

Schedule Design Priorities

• Yearlong courses
• Opportunity for college and career choice
• Time for internships and dual enrollment
• Common planning time for teachers
• Increased academic and social/emotional supports
• Support for the eighth grade transition to high school
• A block for flex time
• Building community and school culture and increasing structure to reduce discipline issues
• Expanding opportunity for the arts and CTE

Achieving all of that, particularly in a school housing grades eight through 12, and keeping class sizes low is an incredibly complex task. 

Integrated Insights makes it possible with strategic school design advising and an intelligent scheduling platform. We help school and district leaders purposefully develop schedules to achieve the school’s priorities, increase access, improve outcomes, and create equity with systematic, student-focused design.

Identifying gaps in access to more advanced coursework

A powerful feature of the Integrated Insights approach is analyzing transcript data, enabling leaders to examine the educational path each student travels during their high school career.

The process aggregates multiyear course patterns by student to provide clarity around course participation, course progression, performance, and persistence that districts can evaluate systemwide and disaggregate by target student groups. 

While persistence was strong across the board for Taunton, the level of rigor varied across the student body – especially for higher-level math courses. Equipped with clear data, school leaders were able to develop strategies to address that.

Scheduling scenario development pinpointed the highest-impact approach

For school design, the Taunton leaders were guided to create three parallel scenarios to demonstrate trade-offs with competing priorities. One scenario, for example, kept the four-by-four block schedule for grades nine through 12, with eighth graders grouped in interdisciplinary academies. Another scenario provided a modified block schedule with seven periods.

Of the three scenarios developed, all had pros and cons. But Scenario 3, which Taunton stakeholders landed on, not only achieved the goal of reducing student transition time, creating small class sizes, and fulfilling course requests, it also resulted in the most time spent on instruction during the school year. For eighth graders, Scenario 3 provides 213 hours of learning per course throughout the school year, while scenarios 1 and 2 would have provided 192 and 163 hours, respectively.

Scenario Comparison

Laying out the scenarios so clearly in advance enabled the district to gain buy-in from teachers and support change management throughout the organization before implementing a new scheduling approach. 

Implementing the chosen new approach to strategic scheduling

With a clear direction it was time to build the schedule for the upcoming school year. Traditionally, the school schedule was built around teachers’ schedules from the previous year. 

The Taunton team used Abl by BetterLesson, the intelligent scheduling platform, to build out a schedule prioritizing maintaining the teachers’ schedules and another prioritizing student course requests.

Faculty and administrators were astounded to see both the impact on class sizes and how many students wouldn’t get the courses they needed or wanted if the focus remained on maintaining the teachers’ schedules.

To maintain the positive momentum, Taunton continued to use the same approach – with guidance and the Abl by BetterLesson platform – the following school year 

The Impact: Efficient, effective scheduling that works better for students, teachers, and the district as a whole

With the launch of its new six-periods-a-day schedule in fall 2022, Taunton High School launched meaningful changes in student academic journeys: 

• Classes were 57-minutes long with math, English, science, and social studies as yearlong courses. 
• High school students could take AP, honors, and college prep courses, along with yearlong and semester-based elective courses. 
• Full-year CTE programs and yearlong courses in performing and visual arts are also an option. And class size across the board hovers around 24 students.

Another key feature of the new schedule is eighth grade academies that provide extra academic and social support during this pivotal year. Students are grouped into cohorts and travel together to their four core courses in the middle of the day, during periods two through five. This approach provides structure and a sense of belonging for the students, and it enables core course teachers to work together during common planning time and enables teachers to provide better communication to parents regarding their child’s progress.

While Superintendent Cabral had long known change was necessary, it was the data that helped move the needle and accelerate action.

Conclusion

But Cabral is confident that the ongoing transformation at Taunton High School will provide limitless opportunities for students now and in the future.

Redesigning a high school schedule entrenched in tradition is a daunting task, but Taunton High School has shown that strategic, data-informed scheduling can transform student experiences.

By prioritizing yearlong instruction, equitable access to rigorous coursework, and flexible pathways in AP, CTE, and the arts, the district has created a structure that meets diverse student needs while maintaining manageable class sizes.

Eighth-grade academies and common planning time for teachers strengthen community, support transitions, and enhance collaboration—all contributing to improved academic and social-emotional outcomes. Students now experience more continuous learning, timely access to assessments, and greater opportunities to pursue postsecondary goals of their choice.

The Taunton High School example demonstrates that innovative scheduling is not just about the bell times—it’s about designing a school system that empowers every student to succeed. With ongoing monitoring and iterative refinement, the district is positioned to sustain equitable opportunities, enhance student engagement, and support lifelong learning for years to come.