Time Matters Blog

The Causal Effects of More Time

By David Farbman on October 10, 2012 – 4:56pm

Often, when we cite research that purports to identify a connection between time and learning, we suggest that the findings are correlational, not causal. In other words, the research may have uncovered a trend where students perform at higher levels in schools or classrooms that have more time, but, because there are many other factors not considered in the analysis (like instructional quality or curriculum materials), we can only surmise that this one factor of time is associated with higher academic performance, but not the cause of it.

Well, now there is a just-released study that is just about as close to providing a causal connection between time and learning as one might hope to get in the real world. (Apologies for the wonky detail of what follows.) The analysis examined a large set of schools in Israel that had, as a result of a revised funding formula, increased instructional time, but had not undertaken any other major educational or organizational changes. With this sample (of over 900 schools), the author was then able to compare test scores in English, science and math in the 2002 – 03 school year to scores in the 2004 – 05 year to measure the effect of more time on outcomes. Undertaking this analysis, the author presented a number of really important findings, but I wanted to highlight two in particular:
Finding #1: The more time schools had increased instructional time in a particular subject, the better students performed. Here is a chart detailing the findings. (The estimate is in standard deviation units.)
Finding #2: When students are disaggregated by gender and by socioeconomic status (level of parental education is used as a proxy here), the effect of increasing instructional time on student outcomes varies considerably from group to group, depending on subject.
Here’s what I think these two findings together really mean, and this research perfectly reflects NCTL’s own view of the role of time in learning. On the one hand, we know definitively from this data that, in general, more time will lead to more learning, but, on the other hand, time operates differently, depending upon how it is used—in this case, what subjects are taught—and who the learner is. Time matters, but not absolutely.
And one final point worth mentioning. As the author of this study notes, the findings on time can be used as a “benchmark” to test how well other interventions (e.g., pay for performance for teachers or professional development) measure up to the intervention of more instructional time. Given how relatively large the impact of more time has been on the performance of these tens of thousands of Israeli students, these yet-to-be assessed interventions certainly have a high bar to surpass.

The Power and Potential of Schools with More Time

By Jennifer Davis on October 3, 2012 – 1:42pm

This post, authored by Jennifer Davis, the Co-Founder and President of the National Center on Time & Learning, originally appeared on the Teach For America Blog, Pass the Chalk.

Over the last few years we have seen a revolution in public education reform in America. One antiquated education structure that is undergoing dramatic change is the standard American school schedule of 180 six-and-a-half hour days. The long summer breaks and short school days are not meeting the needs of today’s students—especially those living in poverty. Exciting new school models are emerging all over the country.
For example, the Orchard Gardens K – 8 School in Boston is in the midst of a remarkable turnaround. Established in 2003, the school suffered from seven years of dismal student performance. Then, two years ago, with a new principal, the infusion of new staff—recruited with the help of TFA—an expanded school schedule, and “turnaround” funding from the federal School Improvement Grant program, the school began experiencing a renaissance. The teachers are talented, passionate, and relentless in their drive to transform their students’ education. Today the school can boast of rapidly rising student achievement, and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick recently singled the school out for praise during his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
My organization, the National Center on Time & Learning, recently published a profile of Orchard Gardens to explore in depth how the school leveraged its longer day to drive higher student achievement and engagement. We learned that in addition to providing students more time on task in academic classes and much more time to participate in arts, music and other enrichment activities, the school re-vamped the teachers’ schedule to prioritize time for collaboration and data review. According to the staff, the collaboration model in place now has made a huge difference in the ways in which teaching and learning take place. Veteran teacher Kellie Njenga explains: “We had common planning time in the past, but it happened infrequently, and the time was almost always spent on operational issues. Now, during the 100-minute meetings, the teacher leader always has an agenda and a clear objective.”
The result of having teachers collaborate consistently has been a remarkable shift in how the faculty commits to learning from each other and to continuously improving. Orchard Gardens is a great example of what schools with expanded time and time dedicated for teacher collaboration can do. (For additional profiles of effective expanded-time schools that have strong models of teacher collaboration, see our study, Time Well Spent.)
In today’s typical school, however, extra time is too rare. A survey of teachers by Scholastic revealed that teachers spend a mere 3.4 percent of their time every day collaborating with peers, about 15 minutes per day. In schools with a longer day, however, there are more opportunities for teachers to meet. When Orchard Gardens added five hours per week to the teachers’ work week, for example, the administration reserved two periods for collaboration per week, a total of 100 minutes in focused sessions. (In addition, the school built in 127 hours of professional development spread across the year.)
Orchard Gardens is part of a larger national movement to expand learning time to accelerate student achievement and offer students a well-rounded educational experience. The Edwards Middle School, for example, also located in Boston, is another school that has greatly benefitted from both expanded learning time and Teach for America. What both of these schools—and many more effective expanded-time schools around the country—show us, is that when it comes to generating real impact on teaching and learning, having more time opens doors of opportunity that would otherwise not exist

Back to School Thoughts from ELT Leaders

By Emily Raine on September 20, 2012 – 4:49pm

This is a guest post by NCTL’s Manager of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, Emily Raine.

As they head back to school, we’ve been asking veteran ELT principals to reflect on their proudest accomplishments last year and what they look forward to doing even better this year, as they seek to strengthen implementation of expanded learning time. We’ve also asked new ELT principals what they are most looking forward to. Some of their responses:
“I am most excited to lead an ELT school this year because it’s an opportunity to dramatically alter the trajectory of students’ lives by building foundational academic skills while providing them with a rich, well-rounded curriculum.” ~David Liebowitz, (New) Principal, Browne Middle School, Chelsea
“We are excited about providing additional time for students to engage in lessons reinforcing performance tasks and critical thinking, which is particularly important as we transition to the Common Core Standards. Because of our expanded-time schedule, all students will be able to focus on developing grade-appropriate skills to engage with complex text, extract and employ evidence through clear writing, and build a knowledge-base for working with technology applications during a designated block.” ~Craig Chalifoux, (Veteran) Principal, Longsjo Middle School, Fitchburg
“I am most excited to lead an ELT school this year because there are so many opportunities embedded within the school day for collaboration, growth, and innovation. As I begin my first year as an ELT principal, I am most eager to learn how other schools encourage and support teacher leadership as well as how they incorporate enrichment opportunities.” ~Danielle Mokaba, (New) Principal, Garfield Middle School, Revere

ELT: Gaining Momentum Across the State

By Emily Raine on September 18, 2012 – 3:53pm

This is a guest post by NCTL’s Manager of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, Emily Raine.

While it is great news that two additional schools will receive the state’s ELT grant this year, perhaps even more exciting is the way in which an ever-increasing number of schools and communities across the Commonwealth are expanding learning time outside of this grant opportunity. From innovation schools to charter schools, the growing interest in expanding learning time as a strategy for turning around struggling schools remains exciting.
Massachusetts’ schools are building off of the lessons learned from the state ELT Initiative to expand time in creative ways. In Salem, their interest in and commitment to expanded learning time is described in this piece by Salem State researcher, Dr. Kevin Fahey. In Boston, Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School, a school that made expanded time a cornerstone of their turnaround strategy, was featured prominently in Governor Deval Patrick’s speech at the Democratic National Convention. Both in Massachusetts and across the country, stories of schools expanding time to meet their students’ needs are now commonplace – and that is due to the initial work here in Massachusetts.

The ELT Initiative Welcomes Two New Schools

By Emily Raine on September 13, 2012 – 4:40pm

This is a guest post by NCTL’s Manager of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative, Emily Raine.

This year, Governor Patrick and the Massachusetts Legislature affirmed their commitment to meaningful school reform by increasing the line-item that supports the first-in-the-nation statewide Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative to $14.17M. This increase has enabled two new schools to join the Initiative. Last spring, with our support, a dozen schools participated in an ELT planning process and submitted an implementation plan to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) in May. From this first-rate group, ESE selected two schools, McKinley Elementary in Revere and Huntington Elementary in Brockton, to implement their new school day this year.
McKinley and Huntington are not entirely new to expanded learning time; both schools had considered expanding time in the past, and had worked for a number of years to build support among teachers, families, and students for the opportunity. Two years ago, Huntington added an hour to the day on its own initiative. Now, the state ELT grant will allow them to build on this foundation and to fully expand their day and include more targeted academic support, enrichment, and collaboration opportunities for their faculty, students, and partners. In addition to adding over an hour to each day, McKinley opted to add five days to the year. The school started earlier than other district schools in order to establish the routines and relationships that are so important to creating a culture of excellence, and to assess and group students for their new academic support and enrichment classes. Congratulations to McKinley and Huntington, and welcome to the ELT Initiative!

Expanded Time Wins Support from Both Parties…. For the Same Reason

By David Farbman on September 5, 2012 – 1:05pm

Last night, in a speech before the Democratic National Convention (and the nation), Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts waxed on about a school in his state that offered a terrific example of how an under-performing school can get a new lease on life when given the tools to turn itself around. That school is the Orchard Gardens K-8 in Boston, about which NCTL published its own description of how expanded time has become a key catalyst in generating higher student achievement and a renewed commitment to learning.

Gov Patrick referenced the first graders at Orchard Gardens with whom he had visited:
“Those children are America’s children, too, yours and mine. And among them are the future scientists, entrepreneurs, teachers, artists, engineers, laborers and civic leaders we desperately need. For this country to rise, they must rise…”
Likewise, the Republicans have also singled out “full-day school hours and year-round schools” in their party platform, as a way to enable children “trapped in failing schools” to have greater opportunities for success. As the Republican party platform outlined,
“Getting those youngsters into decent learning environments and helping them to realize their full potential is the greatest civil rights challenge of our time…. A young person’s ability to achieve in school must be based on his or her God-given talent and motivation, not an address, zip code, or economic status.”
At NCTL, we are proud to be able to promote an idea and a policy that has broad bi-partisan support because, as we have documented, expanded-time schools can offer a proven pathway towards the educational excellence that the rising generation of Americans needs and deserves.

We Need A Longer School Year

By Jennifer Davis on August 31, 2012 – 12:36pm

This article originally appeared in CNN Opinion.

(CNN) — In America, summer holds a special place in our hearts: lazy afternoons, camping at the lake, warm evenings gazing at the moon. For children, especially, summer can unleash the free flow of discovery. For older children, summer often brings their first job.
But this idyllic picture masks the reality that for too many children, particularly those from low-income families, languid summers can be educationally detrimental, and for families in which both parents work, summers are a logistical nightmare.
Considerable research shows that the primary reason the achievement gap between poor children and their more affluent peers widens over the course of their school careers is the long break in learning over the summer. It’s called summer slide.
During the school year, disadvantaged children manage to catch up somewhat to more advantaged students. Read the entire article…

Comprehensive Research Summary Demonstrates the Impact of ELT

By Jennifer Davis on August 20, 2012 – 4:43pm

This is a post by Jennifer Davis, Co-Founder & President of NCTL

An extensive new report from Child Trends commissioned by the Wallace Foundation examining available research on expanded learning time schools and out-of-school time programs has collected comprehensive evidence to support the effectiveness of expanded learning time as a key element in a whole-school reform strategy.
The breadth and variety of research studies represented in the report is what make the results so powerful. The literature review included 27 studies of schools with extended school days (ESD) — 17 of which also included an extended school year (ESY) component; the studies covered 11 distinct models, including a statewide program of public district schools, a district-wide program, charter school models, and magnet schools. The successful schools used the additional time to implement a variety of other school reforms. Those reforms varied from school to school, yet the positive results were still there, making it even more clear that having the extra time to implement comprehensive reforms is the essential element of success. Or, as the researchers put it when discussing the comprehensive reforms delivered at the ELT schools:
“…these models’ other programs often differ substantially, and the consistency of positive outcomes across all models suggest that having a longer school day is a key component of these programs’ success.”
At NCTL, we talk about the importance of how time is used in reports like our Time Well Spent: Eight Powerful Practices of Successful,Expanded-Time Schools, a study of 30 high-performing, high poverty ELT schools. We’re making the same argument, that expanded time enables other key reforms, including improving teacher quality and individualizing supports to students based on student data. While most of the studies included in the Child Trends review focused on the positive academic outcome measures for ESD schools, the schools also got high marks in other areas, including school culture.
“Studies of ESD programs that examined school climate consistently found that effective ESD programs fostered more student-teacher interaction, and that students in these programs exhibited a strong sense of academic engagement and high rates of attendance.”
The report was also explicit that extended time works for elementary, middle, and high school, finding “no evidence, based on this review, suggesting that the effect of ESD models varies across grade levels.”
A few more quotes from the report’s findings section:
• Findings from research on ESD, ESY [extended school year], and ELO [extended learning opportunity, meaning out-of-school time programming] models suggest that ELT programs may be more advantageous for low-income, low-performing, ethnic minority or otherwise disadvantaged students. Results of this research, in turn, suggest that these programs may hold promise to help narrow persisting achievement gaps.
• ESD models appear to be most beneficial to students at increased risk of academic failure or dropout.
But the slim evidence available suggests that extending school time can help raise academic achievement, while out-of-school opportunities can boost “precursors” to achievement, such as educational expectations. – Lucas Held, Director of Communications, Wallace Foundation
And from its recommendations section:
• Continue to support schools and programs that are serving all students well. Also support efforts designed to lift the quality of schools and programs that serve millions of children and teenagers. [emphasis added]
• Findings from ELO and ESY studies suggest that positive outcomes will not be likely if participation in programs is lagging. By supporting quality, it is likely that participation will improve. [We agree completely, and note that they found that ESD schools have a strong sense of student engagement and high attendance.]
• Findings from the ESD, ESY, and ELO studies show that program implementation challenges can limit a program’s effectiveness. Therefore, when supporting new programs, providing professional development, training, and coaching support is essential. In addition, senior school leaders should be encouraged to conduct regular observations that will help them to identify deficiencies in programming and to manage performance in real time.
• When funding ESY and ESD programs, it is important:
• To have a clear plan for how the additional time will be used and to support ongoing monitoring to help ensure that teachers are supported in implementing new teaching strategies and that students are engaged; and
• To get buy-in from parents, students, and teachers. It may make sense to hire teachers and staff who are motivated to work in an ESD or ESY program.
You can see why we’re excited about this report. When an exhaustive review of dozens of research studies reaches the same conclusion that we’ve reached from our years working in communities with schools, teachers, and principals, we know we’re on the right track. Expanded Learning Time schools that use time to implement comprehensive school-wide reforms have the power to close the achievement gap and give all children the opportunity to succeed in college, careers, and life.

Celebrating 10 Years of Working Hard and Being Nice

By Jennifer Davis on August 7, 2012 – 3:41pm
This post by Jennifer Davis, NCTL’s Co-Founder and President, originally appeared in Huffington Post.
Attending the KIPP 10th Annual School Summit last week gave me the chance to reflect on my early work with KIPP, its intersection with my organization, the National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL), and what the future holds for both.
Between 2004 and 2006, my then Massachusetts-based organization, Massachusetts 2020, had helped to create both public and private grant programs to expand learning programs for high-poverty students. I was eager to see the children living in the city where I reside, Lynn (a city located north of Boston with high child poverty rates), benefit from these opportunities. But in a series of meetings it became clear that the district was not yet in a position to embrace the level of reform required by the funders or the state. Around that same time, Massachusetts 2020 was completing a study of schools serving high-poverty students in the northeast that had expanded time to accelerate student achievement. As part of the study I had visited the KIPP Academy in South Bronx, New York and interviewed Dave Levin. I was impressed and, soon after that visit, I met one of the Bronx KIPP Academy teachers — Josh Zoia — who had moved to Massachusetts to open the first KIPP school in the state. Josh invited me to join the KIPP Lynn Board of Directors and I gladly accepted.
While my organization’s mission remains focused on supporting traditional district schools in partnership with union leaders, I knew that serving on the board of one of the KIPP schools would help me reach two goals: helping a group of Lynn children prepare for success in higher education and life and informing our now national organization’s school reform work. Both goals have been achieved. KIPP Lynn students have posted exceptional results and last year NCTL released Time Well Spent which features KIPP successes among 30 high performing, high-poverty district and charter schools. KIPP Heartwood Academy was so inspiring we put together a short video to capture the school’s work. I was particularly impressed with the KIPP alumni who spoke at the Summit and it reinforced NCTL’s positive experience hosting KIPP high school student interns over the summer.
The now 125 KIPP schools serving more than 39,000 students are showing impressive results in part because KIPP offers students roughly 60 percent more school time per year. President Clinton remarked at the Summit how KIPP has been able to replicate excellence and he reflected upon the importance of the KIPP model’s “more time on task.” It was interesting to hear speakers from Louisiana, Charlotte, and Houston describe how KIPP’s success has led other schools in their area (both district and charter) to implement reforms, including expanded school time. The exciting news is that the movement to expand school time is accelerating — from Houston to Boston to New Orleans to Chicago to Denver. KIPP is not the only reason this is happening, of course — the Obama Administration, Congress, the Ford Foundation, the AFT Innovation Fund and many others are pushing for more and better learning time.
So what does this all mean for NCTL’s future work with district schools? As another KIPP Summit speaker, NYT columnist and author Tom Friedman urged “more and better education is necessary. Everyone will have to find their extra.” If we want to stay internationally competitive and help our high-poverty students develop the skills necessary for success, most urban districts are going to have to accelerate improvements and offer a higher quality, broader educational experience than they are now and NCTL is gearing up to support them with that challenge.

New York Times Showcases Movement to Expand Learning Time

By Jennifer Davis on August 6, 2012 – 3:58pm

This is a post by Jennifer Davis, Co-Founder & President of NCTL

The New York Times today featured the national movement to accelerate student achievement and offer a well-rounded education through expanded learning time.
This week, as some schools open their doors for a new school year, national education reporter Motoko Rich featured Balsz Elementary School District #31 in Phoenix, Arizona. Under the leadership of Superintendent Jeff Smith, Balsz has emerged as a pioneer in this field due to its tireless pursuit to ensure that all students succeed. Dr. Smith joined the Balsz district in 2008, and he quickly determined that expanded learning time could be a key strategy in turning around a struggling district. As today’s article notes, Balsz students have made impressive academic gains, while also having more time for enrichment classes and teacher professional development within their expanded school calendar.
The quotes throughout the article echo what the NCTL team hears as we work across the country:
“The kids’ education is more important than all of these breaks that we have.” – Debra Phillips, mother of two children attending Griffith Elementary School
“Better is as important as the more.” – Jeannie Oakes, Director of educational opportunity and scholarship programs at the Ford Foundation
“The fact that our calendar has been based on the agrarian economy when almost none of our kids work in the field anymore doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.” – Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education
“Sometimes summer is really boring. We just sit there and watch TV.” – Riziki Gloria, 5th grader at a Balsz school
To read the full article, click here.

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