She moved to another school for a year, leaving behind a teacher she had gotten used to. It can do wonders for parents, too, some said, by improving their relationship with the instructors. Looping was once the dominant teaching strategy in American schools and remains strong in European and Japanese schools. But there are drawbacks. Many schools have tried and discontinued the system because teachers did not mesh well with students and parents, or simply did not anticipate all the work they had to do to learn a new curriculum for the next grade's work.
Most teachers have to spend much of their summer mastering the new material.
Not too long ago, more than 20 teachers were looping at St. Leonard Elementary School in Calvert County. Now only a handful do it. Students were performing poorly on standardized tests for a variety of reasons, and Principal Ted Haynie decided that trying to improve test scores while shifting teachers from grade to grade was too hard. Some parents are reluctant to let their children loop because they fear getting stuck with bad teachers. Then there is the summer downtime.