I believe in a generalist model in elementary school and would not want to see it go to a middle or highschool model.
Why? What's better about it?
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I love the elementary school climate and community and while I strongly support homogenous grouping for targeted academic work, I believe in the value of a diverse and heterogeneous classroom community. I realize that there are many places where this is not done well, which makes me sad. However, there are also places where it is done well, and my hope is to see more schools beginning to move toward team models of teaching. My building uses an instructional team model in which 3 teachers work with 30-34 students (in K,1 or 2/3 classroom) or with 45-52 students (in a 4/5 classroom). We are able to create much tighter instructional groups under this arrangement than would be true in three stand alone classrooms, without sacrificing the opportunity for kids of vastly different backgrounds and abilities to get to know and appreciate one another.
With a few exceptions, students are with us all day, and we get to know them extremely well. Especially in high poverty schools like the one I work in, that makes a huge difference. I don't think this community is only important in high poverty schools, however. I have strong, mostly positive memories of my own elementary classrooms and classroom teachers (save for a horrendous fourth grade teacher), vs. the fragmented memories I have of my middle and high school teachers and classmates. DD11, who is on the shy side, bonded strongly with her classroom teachers in elementary school. It took a long time for her to be comfortable even in those environments--she barely spoke in other classes (P.E., music, etc.) and it often took a long time even with that steady classroom teacher for a teacher to "see" her. If she'd been shuffled from teacher to teacher she not only would have been miserable, I believe she would have been nearly invisible.
Her transition to middle school was an unhappy one. She felt that none of her teachers knew her well, and I would tend to agree with her. When teachers specialize, they are likely to work with 120+ students at a time, and I think it is very difficult to really know that many students well enough to program well for them. By middle and high school we expect our children to be self-sufficient, to advocate for themselves, and to be more adult-independent. Those skills are cultivated in a smaller elementary environment, especially when they aren't well cultivated at home, or when with kids like my DD, they are shy and sensitive to criticism. It is difficult to learn to take constructive criticism (especially for our perfectionists) and I believe that it is an easier skill to learn when there is opportunity to build a strong, trusting relationship with a teacher and peer group.
Again, I acknowledge that children at the "tails" need some variations in approach and grouping. They may also need different things out of their elementary years then most children do. However, they don't all need the same things, and just as it is inappropriate to force children at the tails into the structures and instruction that meets the needs of a larger group of children, it I believe that it is also inappropriate to sacrifice the needs of the larger group because some children at the tails don't have the same needs.
I want elementary school to meet every child at their next level of challenge, but I also want it to be fun, and I believe a generalist model lends itself more easily to creating a fun overall experience.
