Promising News from Oregon

This is a guest post by Michael Pernick, Program Associate for NCTL. 

Last week, the Governor of Oregon signed HB 4014 into law.  HB 4014  dealt with many important education issues including laws pertaining to school boards, kindergarten, teacher evaluation, and assessments.  One critical section of the bill that caught our eye was the one that aims to transform the state’s regulations related to the school day and school calendar, and encourages expanded learning time as a key component of school improvement.

I took the time to read through the bill and I was particularly struck by its use of strategic language that very much mirrors our own. In fact, the use of more time in HB 4014 fully incorporated three of the main components in NCTL’s case for more time:
 
 
In our Time Well Spent report, we go into considerable detail in how high-performing, high-poverty expanded-time schools have put in place best practices that align to each of these areas.  These buckets of work also match up with the Massachusetts ELT initiative, featured in our Learning Time in America report, which has funded an additional 300 hours per year in 19 schools across Massachusetts for the last 6 years. It is nice to not only see Oregon sign into law a reform that has tremendous potential to improve the quality of education Oregon students receive, but more importantly, it is commendable to see that the law strategically sets forth language that allocates time in the areas we know promote success in schools and for students.  Bravo, Oregon!