Supplementary Materials

To make the best use of time as a school reform, policymakers should:

Collect and Use Data on School Time

In order for time to be effectively leveraged as a school improvement strategy, educators and policymakers must understand what is happening in schools today. Toward this end, the collection and analysis of time-use data in schools must be improved. As a nation, we have yet to pay attention to the use of school time in any systematic way and therefore lack a deep understanding of what's happening in our schools and classrooms. Data should be used to answer questions such as:

• How is time in school currently spent?

• How much time is spent on academic instruction in a given school day and in a given class period?

• How well are teachers able to cover the curriculum within existing time constraints?

• Do problems stem from ineffective teaching or poor curriculum coverage relative to state standards?

• How much time is lost to poor classroom management or “dead time,” when students are dozing or waiting for instruction?

• Are events, field trips and testing schedules aligned to complement the curriculum?

• And do teachers and students feel that they have enough time for learning and, if not, what do they want more time for?

These are questions to be addressed at the national and local levels. On the national level, there is little reason to delay more and deeper analyses of time-use in schools. Existing federal surveys already collect useful and relevant data, most notably the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and its supplement, the Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS), conducted every four years since 1987 by the U.S. Department of Education's data collection unit, the National Center for Education Statistics. SASS and TFS provide a massive amount of nationally representative data on multiple dimensions of schools and teachers, including a wide range of information about how teacher's time is spent at school, working outside of school, planning during the school day, and teaching core subjects. As one of the largest sample studies in the nation, involving more than 50,000 teachers, 12,000 administrators and 4,500 districts from around the country, SASS provides one of the best and most cost-effective means for obtaining and analyzing data about what's currently happening inside schools and classrooms around the United States. Yet there have been very few studies that have used these data to explore the efficacy of instructional strategies, and there have been no regular reports examining time-related data.

The High School Survey of Student Engagement (HSSSE), an off-shoot of the National Survey of Student Engagement for college students that was first administered in 2004, is another potential boon for data collection on school and classroom practices. “Hessie,” as it is called, is designed to examine student attitudes about their school experience. Participation is likely to grow (in 2004 it reached students in a little more than 100 schools in 26 states). The addition of time-use questions to this survey would provide data on the student perspective of how time is used in schools, complementing the school-, teacher- and administrator-level data of SASS.

While the U.S. Department of Education can and should provide a national portrait of how time is spent in school, it is equally important for states, districts and schools to track how students and teachers are spending their time in school in more finely grained ways. Student assessment data now provide new opportunities to measure student achievement and progress in relation to the use of time. While it is difficult to isolate the effects of time and harder still to know the nature of the teaching and learning interactions that occur in a classroom, it is critical that teachers and schools pay attention to assessment results to determine if students are performing poorly because there is not enough time to teach content or because content is not being taught well. There are straightforward strategies that can help determine if time really is the most important factor for student achievement. For example:

• At the school and district level, data on the amount of time allocated for instruction can be tracked along with student assessment results and the proportion of time spent on non-instructional activities. This would help administrators better understand how time is used and how effectively it is used. Looking at the amount of time provided for Algebra I instruction, for example, and the results of corresponding math assessments would, at the very least, give schools and districts baseline information on how well schools are using time.

• At the classroom level, teachers can keep detailed records of what actually occurs in their classrooms. Through the use of time diaries, teachers log what they teach, how much time they spend teaching it and the instructional methods used to deliver it. This allows them to then use student assessment data to determine the effectiveness of their lessons and methods, and pinpoint holes in content. When compared with assessment results and the strengths and weaknesses of the instructional program they reveal, this data offers powerful analytic leverage to educators.

Schools and districts can compile these analyses in order to determine weaknesses in curricula, to align curricula with assessments, and to design professional development that reflects the real needs of teachers. It can also help district and school administrators determine whether low student performance is a problem best solved by adding time or by improving teaching.

Adding time to classes taught by well-trained teachers who understand what level and type of instruction students need is likely to increase student learning. However, for schools that demonstrate poor quality teaching, rote instructional methods, and a curriculum that is poorly aligned with state and district standards and assessments, adding time may not be the first or best priority for reform.

Focus on Context

Like many educational reforms, the value and success of time reform in any district or community depends greatly on context. What will succeed in one school may fail in another, and what is needed in one district may be unnecessary or even unwelcome in another. With this in mind, the best extended-time reforms will not be national or universal programs, although they will share some common characteristics. The most cost-effective and worthwhile time reforms will target low-income students who are most in need of extra learning. As research indicates, these students will benefit more from added learning opportunities than their wealthier peers and their parents appear more likely to support more time in school.

Moreover, NCLB presents new opportunities to design and fund quality extended-learning programs for these students, as schools receiving Title I funds are encouraged under the law to increase learning time through extended-day, extended-year and summer programs. These funds can be used to coordinate extended-time programs, engage parents in the process, or pay teacher salaries.

Unfortunately, many of the neediest students in our nation are also in the worst schools with the most limited potential to realize effective reform. These are the schools with low student engagement and high absenteeism, where many students are loathe to stay for six hours, much less eight. Extending time in these schools will ensure longer periods of supervised care for children but, absent quality teaching and curricula, more time in these schools will not provide better learning. Policymakers must therefore determine which schools serving low-income students are also poised to successfully carry out this level of reform. Weighing need against capacity can be difficult, but there are several indicators of school readiness that policymakers can look for to help determine a school's capacity to implement extended-time reform:

• Strong leadership with a vision for school improvement;

• Plans for and demonstrated progress toward change;

• A committed and well-trained staff of teachers;

• A clear and shared set of goals that center on student learning;

• A safe and supportive teaching and learning environment for students and teachers; and

• Support for reform from parents and the broader community.

Massachusetts 2020 President Jennifer Davis explains that not all schools are prepared to embark on time reform. States and districts looking to extend time for the neediest students in some of the lowest performing schools, then, should be prepared to assess school capacity. There are a couple of ways to approach this task. In Massachusetts, a statewide competitive grant process ensured the selection of schools and districts with high-need populations and a demonstrated commitment to and capacity for change. States could also directly identify Title I schools that have been labeled in need of improvement under NCLB and that have demonstrated plans for and/or progress toward change on school improvement plans. Both options require strong and carefully crafted evaluation components to measure the impact of added time on student performance.

Pay Attention to Existing Programs

Outside of school-based reform, extending learning time is not a new idea. The federal government spends more than $1 billion a year on out-of-school, after-school, and expanded learning opportunities. Most of this funding goes to the 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative, designed to provide expanded “academic enrichment opportunities” for children in low-performing schools through a wide range of services including tutoring, youth development, drug and violence prevention, music and recreation, and technology activities. The 21st Century initiative is now administered at the state level and has increased its emphasis on the academic content and rigor of the after-school programs it supports. This has enabled schools to use some of these funds to support longer school days or other in-school extended time programs. While most schools use these grant funds to fund optional after-school programs, some schools are finding more creative ways to integrate these funds into the school budget to support extended school time focused on academic learning.

Supplemental educational services (SES) funds are also being used to extend learning programs for low-income students. Under Title I of NCLB, schools that are designated as “in need of improvement” for three years or more are required to offer SES to students through tutoring, remediation or other educational intervention. The providers of these educational services, as well as the types of services themselves, are many and varied. They include for-profit and nonprofit groups, community-based and national organizations, colleges and universities, and public schools that are not in need of improvement. But state agencies may not have a thorough grasp of the wide range of supplemental services available and what type of “extended learning” is being provided to students, although they are responsible for approving and monitoring the effectiveness of service providers and their programs. Nor is there a clear sense of how these services are connected to or aligned with other state and local after-school and other out-of-school learning programs. Further, the quality of these services varies dramatically.

With students spending most of their waking hours outside of school, attention to out-of-school learning is imperative. Indeed, there is little reason to argue that schools should be the sole provider of learning opportunities. Many of the organizations that operate extended learning programs have long histories of engaging community youth in activities after school, on the weekends and over summer and winter vacations. Thus, before embarking on new ways to extend learning time within schools, policymakers should pay careful attention to existing programs, many of which take place on school property and are difficult to distinguish from “new” proposals to increase school-based time.

As a whole, policymakers would be wise to pay attention to how 21st Century and SES funds are being used in their states and communities, and to take a close look at how much of their state budgets are already allocated to extended learning opportunities. What programs already exist? How expensive are they? And how effective are they in raising student achievement? These are important factors to consider before proposing new and potentially costly increases to the school day. Adding school time has the potential to increase student achievement but, in the end, it will be a combination of school-based instruction and out-of-school opportunities that will lead to better student learning.