The Benefits of Teacher Looping

For some of the children at Dyersburg Primary School in northwest Tennessee, starting school this past fall felt familiar. They'd moved up a grade, but kept the same teacher and most of the same classmates.

That's because Dyersburg "loops" teachers - a practice in which teachers stay with the same group of students for more than one grade.

Spending more than one year with students is not a new idea in education. In multiage classrooms, such as in Montessori schools, children typically stay with the same teacher for several years. And Waldorf schools have looped teachers for more than a century. About 12% of public schools across the U.S. used some form of teacher looping in the 2017-2018 school year (the most recent year for which federal data is available). The practice is most common in Vermont, where more than half of schools use it.

Proponents say the benefits are simple. When teachers have more time with students, they get to know them better and can teach them more effectively. It's a low-cost way to deepen teacher focus on all students, but particularly those who need the most support.

There's some effort involved upfront for teachers: They have to know the curriculum for the next grade. But they get to know their students better, which can lead to more job satisfaction and academic gains for students.

"We knew that if the teacher had more time with students, we could see some gains," says Linda DeBerry, the principal at Dyersburg, which covers prekindergarten through second grade. Students in their second year with the same teacher typically learn over one-third more content than students in the same grade who had different teachers, DeBerry says. "We see evidence of this in all grades."

Part of the reason students do better, she says, is that parents know the teachers better and are more involved in their children's education. That observation aligns with a 2022 study of Tennessee students - from grades three through 11 - who had the same teachers for more than one year. Even though most of these cases happened accidentally, when teachers switched grades or subjects, having a repeat teacher still resulted in better attendance and fewer disciplinary issues.

Academically, kids who had a repeat teacher also learned a little more than those who didn't - the equivalent of about two weeks of extra instruction, or a month for high schoolers.

The reason, researchers conclude, is that longer relationships make both teaching and learning easier, and improve student behavior.

"These are small numbers, but this is a nearly zero-cost policy," says Leigh Wedenoja, a senior policy analyst with the Rockefeller Institute of Government and a lead researcher on the study. "Longer relationships are likely resulting in better behavior."

Providing Consistency

Elementary students typically have the same teacher for multiple years in subjects outside their regular classroom, like music, physical education or art. But intentional academic teacher looping is less common. In the Tennessee study, for example, most students who had teachers for multiple years had them in middle or high school, and not necessarily sequentially.

In Dyersburg, Principal DeBerry started looping teachers 15 years ago after noticing benefits when looping happened accidentally.

"What we see is those teachers know exactly what student strengths and weaknesses are. At beginning of the year, they don't have to figure that out," she says. "For students who don't develop as fast, teachers have longer with them to reach goals." Now, at the end of every school year, she offers teachers the opportunity to stay with their class for a second year, and many do so.

When Keith Lyman came to work at Brattleboro Area Middle School in Vermont, core-subject teachers were already looping up to follow their students. Brattleboro serves seventh and eighth graders, and groups students and teachers into "families" that stay together for both years.

Brattleboro students face a lot of transitions. In their first year they're adjusting to middle school. In their second, they're getting ready to move on to high school. Lyman says that having the same core teachers both years is part of an effort to avoid any additional transitions.

"Looping is about developing relationships and consistency for kids, especially when there are a lot of other changes going on," Lyman says. In addition to having the same core teachers both years, students stay in the same classrooms and have the same lockers.

"What middle schoolers need is structure and clear expectations," Lyman says.

Benefits for Teachers and Other Students

There can be inconveniences for some teachers who loop. Instructional content can change, so there's the time spent boning up on a new reading or math curriculum for two grade levels. And in some schools, teachers must shift physical classrooms with each grade level, even if the students are the same.

To address another potential drawback - cases where students are teachers are not a great fit and would not benefit from an extra year together - some principals get input from parents and teachers during the summer before making classroom assignments, moving a student if necessary.

But research shows that teachers come to understand their students in deeper ways when they spend more than one year together. And there are other benefits for teachers.

Looping with students, even if it doesn't take place in sequential years, can be more efficient, says John Papay, associate professor of education and economics at Brown University's Annenberg Institute. Papay, another lead researcher on the Tennessee study, cites the time teachers spend getting to know students at the beginning of the school year.

"There's an upfront cost - learning names, talking about goals, getting to know families," he says. "If you have students a second year, you don't have to do that. There's less diagnostic work."

When looping is formal, as at Dyersburg Primary and Brattleboro Middle, teachers can plan to allocate curriculum over two years instead of one. As the end of the first year approaches, the teacher can make decisions based on how students are learning about where to leave off, and then where to pick up again in the fall.

Interestingly, Papay notes, the Tennessee study didn't just find academic and behavioral benefits for students who had the same teacher for multiple years. There is a "spillover" effect during the second year of a looped classroom for students who are having the teacher for the first time. Students who are new to a teacher in a class where half of the students have had the teacher before also do better academically, have better attendance and fewer behavioral issues than they did in other teachers' classrooms.

"Teachers have a limited amount of time and energy," says researcher Wedenoja. "If there are only a few new kids to get to know, you can spend more time building those new relationships."

It's an approach that may not work in every school or for every teacher, Wedenoja notes. Some teachers are very good at teaching kindergarten, but wouldn't be as good at teaching first grade. In schools where there is high teacher or student mobility, looping might not make sense. But where looping does work, it seems to work well, she says.

"There's something about sustained relationships that matters."