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Grants in Action
National Center on Time & Learning
Aligning School Hours with Student Needs
It’s something of a mystery why the typical U.S. school calendar – September through May – came to be. One theory is that the calendar was developed to meet the needs of farm or factory schedules back when children were expected to work. Another blames the weather: it was just too hot to learn before air conditioning existed. Whatever the reason, the six-to-seven-hour days and summers-off schedule has been in place for about 100 years. Now there is a movement to change that.
“Our country still has tremendous achievement gaps among students that are essentially based along socioeconomic lines,” says Ben Lummis of the National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL). “When you look at the kids that do the best, they get more learning time, provided to them in many different forms.” In addition, more and more educators and leaders believe that changes in technology make it important to provide more hours of learning.
NCTL advocates for the expansion of learning time both through longer school days and and longer school years. One of the loudest arguments against doing so is fiscal. It seems counter-intuitive to add hours just as most school districts across the country face shrinking budgets.
But Lummis has seen it work without increasing a school’s overall budget. “It’s a resource puzzle,” says Lummis. “School districts are getting very thoughtful and strategic – staggering schedules, hiring teachers with different credentials, engaging fewer outside experts for professional development, offering special education services in different ways. There are a lot of ways to accomplish this.”
Lummis says that the common denominators in schools that have successfully extended learning time are a focus on a few specific goals, a lot of collaboration and buy-in from everyone involved. “It’s important that schools add time for core classes and enrichment classes, as well as time for teacher collaboration with specific goals in mind. There also needs to be targeted instruction for kids based on their individual needs.”
In Colorado, four school districts will be piloting schools with extended hours: Adams 12 Five Star Schools, Aurora Public Schools, Boulder Valley School District and Denver Public Schools.
How do parents feel about the suggested changes? “If parents understand the underlying reasons and are involved in the planning process, the response is very positive,” says Lummis. “If a school says they are going to provide more academics and enrichment, and they’ll do it in a safe, positive place, parents realize that will help their children.”
Rose Community Foundation has made two grants to support the four metro Denver school districts involved in pilot programs. Learn more about nationwide efforts to extend school hours at timeandlearning.org.
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From Impact - Summer 2011, Rose Community Foundation's newsletter
Two boys play basketball at a local elementary school on a lazy summer day
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How One School is Adding Time
“We’re extending time for our kids who need catch-up growth by starting and ending the workday for our intervention teachers an hour later,” says Doris Candelarie, principal at Alicia Sanchez Elementary School in Lafayette. “This enables us to teach those students an extra hour every day. Over the course of the school year, this will add up to about 26 extra days for those kids."