Out of Sync Suppose a family moves into the Wissahickon School District with a 10th grade student. Under block scheduling, a Wissahickon student would be taking only 4 subjects at a time and covering material in those subjects at twice the speed of classes in a normal 7 or 8 period day. Any student moving in would be a great deal behind in the four subjects they chose to take. Transferring in later during the year makes this problem more difficult.
Some schools using block scheduling have a teacher available to help transfer students catch up.
At a glance this sounds good. A closer inspection shows the futility of this. Some administrators simply say that these students can take sequential subjects in the second half of the year. The students must be behind in the none-sequential areas. When these students take the sequential courses in the spring semester, they will have to waste time repeating material they already had until they are at the point where they were in the previous school district when they transferred into Wissahickon.