Ten Questions To Ask On Expanded Learning Time
Amid the push to improve public education, a frequent complaint by educators is that there isn’t enough time in the school day to adequately cover everything students are supposed to be learning – or to address the myriad challenges they bring with them to class every day.
As a result, school districts nationally are looking for ways to
expand
learning time for students. In some instances, that effort
means adding minutes to the traditional day or providing weekend
programs. In others, the focus is on stemming the well-documented
and often substantial learning loss that occurs during the long
summer break.
Much of the attention is put on minority students and students
from low-income families who are already struggling in school.
(For more on the educational equity gap in high-poverty schools,
and how expanded learning time might be used to address it,
consider a recent
op-ed by Lucy Friedman, president of ExpandedED Schools by
TASC (The After-School
Corporation), which provides programs and services to
students in Baltimore, New Orleans and New York City.) More
recently, there have been efforts to use expanded learning time
to ramp up for the new Common Core State Standards, and to expose
relatively successful students to a more challenging learning
environment.
The research on the effectiveness of extended learning time
offers mixed conclusions that depend heavily on how programs are
structured: It’s not just about the quantity of the instructional
minutes, but the overall quality, as well. (Check out a
2012 report by Child Trends for more on this point.) And
ensuring that extra time is well spent typically requires
significant resources, both dollars — to pay for programs and
services– as well as talented and committed staff members. How
can already cash-strapped districts pay for more time for
learning? Will teachers and administrators be willing to accept
the added workload? What measures will signal if the programs are
working?
For education reporters covering this crucial issue, there is no
shortage of great issues to explore. To get you started, I pulled
together a list of 10 questions, with a few bonus follow-ups.
To come up with my list, I spoke with reporters with experience
covering expanded learning time. I also reached out to experts at
some of the nonprofit organizations providing extended learning
time opportunities to students across the country: Jennifer
Davis, co-founder and president of the National Center on Time &
Learning; Friedman of TASC; Lynsey Wood Jeffries, national chief
executive officer of Higher Achievement, which
provides programs for middle school students in Baltimore,
Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C.; Dara Rose, a program officer
with The Wallace
Foundation; and Chris Smith (executive director) and Louise
Harland (deputy director) of Boston After School &
Beyond.
Ten Questions
1. How many instructional minutes do students currently
receive in your district, and how does that total compare with
the national average? (The
Education Commission of the States is an excellent resource
for making state-to-state comparisons.) Who is in favor of a
longer instructional day, and what are their goals? Better test
scores? Student enrichment? Staff development?
2. Would students benefit more from extended learning time
during the traditional academic day or in the summer months when
their time is largely unstructured? Should the focus be on
programs for all students, or would targeting students who are
behind their peers be a better use of what are likely to be
limited resources? A
2012 report by Child Trends examined more than 80 expanded
learning programs, and would be a good source to consider in
framing the debate. The report, commissioned by the Wallace
Foundation, found that programs were slightly more effective when
the focus was on younger students with higher levels of academic
risk.
3. In schools that already have expanded learning time,
what changes are students, teachers and parents noticing? Have
test scores risen? And are there measures being considered beyond
test scores to determine whether the programs are effective? Are
expectations of what expanded learning time will accomplish too
stringent or unrealistic? Conversely, is the bar being set too
low?
4. How will the expanded learning time be paid for in the
local schools? What public-private partnerships are being
explored? Will volunteer organizations be tapped, or will the
district pay an outside provider?
5. If a school district partners with an outside
organization to provide expanded learning time, what benchmarks
are being used to evaluate the program’s quality? Does the
organization have a track record of success in other communities,
or will it start from scratch?
6. Building off question No. 5, how will the success of
the partnership be measured, and how will those outcomes be
shared with the wider community, particularly parents? Will
schools have to report student and/or school outcomes to the
partners, and vice versa? How soon should a program be expected
to have evidence of a positive impact?
7. When setting a school’s priorities, should more time
for student learning always be given top consideration? Would the
learning time already on the schedule be more effective if some
expanded time were used for professional development and helping
classroom teachers improve their instruction?
8. Should expanded learning time focus on giving teachers
an opportunity to delve more deeply into the content they are
already covering during the regular day, or should it be spent on
student enrichment activities? For more on this angle, take a
look at a 2012 research
brief by the National Center on Time & Learning. A
report by TASC on its approach contends that giving schools
flexibility to adjust to the needs of individual students is a
key component.
9. A policy brief from the
Harvard Family Research Project at the Harvard Graduate
School of Education contends that the responsibility for
providing year-round learning should fall to the wider community,
and not be shouldered solely by schools. Would students at
underperforming schools be better off getting their extra minutes
in a different setting rather than just extending the amount of
time they spend in the same classroom?
10. A survey by
the National Center on Time & Learning found that the strongest
support for expanding learning time was among parents in the
poorest and most affluent income brackets.How do families in your
community feel about expanding the school day or year, and what
do they want their children to do with the extra time? Is their
input being sought?
Up next: Three “Stories to Steal” on expanded learning
time.