The first day of school brings with it a variety of anxious moments, but the anticipation of the new academic year starts well before classes are in session as parents and students eagerly await their classroom assignments.

But while knowing if a student's teacher is the same as the one their older sibling had or if their best friend will be sitting next to them in class might seem inconsequential in the long run, figuring out classroom placements is a task of high priority in modern-day elementary schools.

'It's not like it used to be'

Melissa Calvino was a third- and fourth-grade teacher in the Hartford, Connecticut, school system for many years, and still remembers a conversation she had with a senior on graduation day in the late '90s. The student was recalling his time in school and said his one main regret was that he didn’t take a more challenging course load, and how that hurt his transcript when applying to colleges.

“He said to me, ‘I was never really encouraged to take the harder classes, and got this reputation as being a C student. It was hard to break free from that,’” remembers Calvino, who is now retired from teaching and lives in Natick. “The student had a learning disability growing up, and I started to wonder if things would have turned out differently if we paid more attention to the classes and groups of students he was exposed to along the way.”

In the past 10-15 years, schools have paid closer attention to younger students’ specific needs and learning styles, carefully selecting in which classroom an elementary student is placed. The task of assigning classes at the elementary level has become an increasingly collaborative and intricate process, the outcome of which plays an important role in shaping the performance of both teachers and students.

"(We used to see) a much more homogeneous classroom setting," said John Oteri, superintendent of the Malden Public Schools. "Kids were put into classes with other kids who were the most like them. If they spoke the same language or had a similar educational requirement, they may have been grouped together.”

This model – known as student tracking – was long seen as a benefit, as it would allow students to interact and learn with peers that were seen as comparable to themselves. It also made it easier for teachers to teach similar students the same way.

But in recent years, the practice of tracking has been viewed by some as a form of segregation, placing too much emphasis on achievement and not recognizing individual speeds and styles at which students learn.

A multi-step process

“Other than the day-to-day educational operations of the school, figuring out a class list might be the most important task we do all year,” said David Barner, principal of the Old Post Road School in Walpole. “Putting kids in the right classroom sets everyone up to succeed. That’s why so much work goes into it, and why we get so much input from so many different people.”

Barner said he has witnessed the shift in recent years to focusing more on how diverse student populations interact and learn together.

At his school, the process begins with sending a letter home to parents well before the school year even ends.

“The first step is soliciting input from parents, getting information about a child’s learning style, their strengths and their needs,” he said. “This input is highly valued. I read all of the letters from parents. Teachers read them as well.”

The placement selection process plays out over the course of a month, Barner said. It starts with a meeting near the end of the school year with anyone who might have familiarity with the student, from their previous year’s teacher to school counselors to special instructors (music, art, physical education, etc.).

A draft list of classes is assembled with individual students in mind, but also group dynamics.

“We ensure an even mixture of genders, ethnic backgrounds, learning styles,” he said. “We try to make sure every student has at least one friend, too.”

The draft lists are reviewed and then changes are proposed.

“Everyone sleeps on it, and by the time we meet again in early June, we are ready to finalize the list,” Barner said.

Challenges of a larger district

According to state figures for the 2018-2019 school year, Walpole has just over 1,600 students enrolled in kindergarten through fifth grades. But for a district nearly double in size, as Malden is, the task of putting together a class list has an added layer.

“We try to make classes as heterogeneous as possible, because we have so many different races, backgrounds, languages, things like that,” said Oteri. “It’s a way to bring out all of the different strengths of our students, because they all bring something to the table that others can learn from.”

Of Malden’s 2,918 K-5 students enrolled at the start of the 2018-2019 school year, nearly 22% were of Asian descent and more than 5% were listed as multiracial, numbers more than double those found in larger cities such as Boston, Worcester or Lawrence. There are more than 60 languages spoken throughout the district, with eight or nine core languages that are most common along the district's non-English speakers.

"Having such a high English Learner population makes it all the more important to balance classes and place kids in the best environment to learn and grow as students,” Oteri said.

He added that while state and federal testing assessments help determine when an English Learner is ready to be immersed in a standard classroom, students are constantly monitored both before being assigned a classroom, and afterward.

“We feel that as soon as it is educationally safe and beneficial for a student to be placed in a classroom, they should be moved,” he said. “We find they make great strides by being put into the right classroom. Their learning, in all areas, is really accelerated. This follows them along as they move up in grades as well.”

Oteri said for his district, it is not uncommon to move students into different classes during the year.

"We want them to be in the class that is the best fit, and in a district like this, there has to be some flexibility and room for adjustments," he said. "Plus we have students coming in to our district from all over the world, and not just over the summer. It’s a very fluid process, that we monitor throughout the year to make sure our classes are giving students the best opportunities to succeed.

Down the right path

Calvino said she never gave it much thought at the time, but looking back, many of the students who were known as “A-plus kids” in elementary school often went on to be the kids graduating at the top of their class 10 years later. The same was also true for the kids who struggled.

“I’m not saying the classes students were put into was an afterthought, but certainly if certain kids were coming up through the ranks today, their needs would have been identified earlier and I’m sure they would have been paired with teachers and peers that put them in a better place to succeed," Calvino said. "Schools are always improving how they approach education, and student integration and how classes are assembled has come a long way."

Oteri agreed, saying districts such as Malden are “way ahead” of where they were even 10 years ago in terms of setting younger students up for future success, and gone are the days when students might be segregated based on performance, special education needs or Individualized Education Programs.

“A good example is participation in Advanced Placement courses, where certain groups were highly underrepresented,” Oteri said. “We’ve worked hard to balance classes at the elementary level, so that by the time high school rolls around, there are so many more students equipped to take AP courses. We definitely see that having the right mix of classes in the lower levels can have benefits for years to come.”