Describes how principals assign teachers and students to single-grade and combination classes. Presents research showing unexpected constraints that fundamentally changed the basis of class assignment and, consequently, the nature of classroom compositions. A case is made that multitrack calendars reduce principals' flexibility to make purposive…

Notes the increasing availability of prekindergarten programs for four-year-olds and describes a program that groups four- and five-year-olds together. Covers the program's instructional goals; reasons for using multi-aged grouping, cooperative teaching, and structured planning time; curriculum; interaction with parents; and dependence on the…