Time Matters Blog

Teachers, Time & Sustainable Solutions

By Emily Raine on June 18, 2012 – 2:21pm

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

Last Thursday, NCTL was invited by Teach Plus to participate in an evening of conversations with their Boston Teaching Policy Fellows. Teach Plus is a three year-old and rapidly growing organization devoted to creating opportunities for teachers to engage in education leadership and policy, all while staying in the classroom. Their Teaching Policy Fellows are a carefully selected group of ubertalented and passionate teachers, who meet regularly for 18 months to come up with new ideas to address the challenges facing their schools and the system as a whole. Check out their most recent policy brief on teacher evaluation; it’s good stuff.
Thursday’s event brought these fellows together with a handful of policymakers – Boston Teachers Union President Richard Stutman and State Senator (and former teacher) Sonia Chang-Diaz among them – to discuss the issues they and we care about, including expanded learning time. The mere fact that expanded time is on the agenda at a teacher-driven event like this is exhilarating, and represents a sizable shift from when I first started at NCTL five years ago.
I participated in an hour of rapid-fire dialogue full of questions, challenges, and possible solutions with nine of the fellows. We discussed teacher and student burnout, staggered schedules, the best way to approach academic interventions, the worst way to approach academic interventions, and the bevy of opportunities more learning time can present for the arts, music, health, theater, and science labs. I left with my head spinning, but over the past few days three things have crystallized in my mind as a result of listening to these thoughtful teachers:
1.  There’s broad consensus among teachers – at least these teachers – that students need and deserve more learning time. I was reminded of KIPP Co-founder Dave Levin’s declaration last fall that “more time cannot be the debate anymore”: we know today’s students need more time to succeed. This simply can’t be in question.
2.  While there’s a lot of emerging evidence about how to expand time effectively, the question of how to expand time sustainably has not yet been answered. When I think “sustainability”, I think funding. At NCTL we’ve been thinking about that quandary for years, and we think we’re starting to make some inroads. But the teachers pushed my thinking about what “sustainable” really means, not simply in terms of dollars and cents, but in terms of human capital. We have to come up with more dynamic expanded time models that meet the needs of students, and also the very real needs of the adults that work with them. The most “effective” ELT school isn’t effective if, over time, it exhausts the ambition, creativity, and stamina of our best teachers.
3.  We need teachers to help develop solutions to this challenge. We simply can’t do it without them. We’re fortunate to have some former teachers on staff here – as well as principals, superintendents, and after-school leaders like me – but ultimately, inventive solutions to expanding time effectively and sustainably will come from the front-line teachers working in schools and classrooms every day.
On that last point, our team is already thinking through how to more deeply engage teacher-leaders like those in the Teaching Plus network in a “reengineering” of existing expanded day and year models. To any teachers out there reading this: how can YOU help create new solutions to expanding time sustainably?

Race to the Top Recommendation

By David Goldberg on June 8, 2012 – 5:07pm

This post originally appeared on the Time to Succeed homepage.

Earlier today, the National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) submitted a very detailed comment on the Department of Education website urging the Department to incorporate expanded learning time in the upcoming round of Race to the Top, which is focused on individual school districts as opposed to states.
The Race to the Top District program is a competitive grant program designed to spur innovation in creating student-centered learning environments that are designed to improve teaching and learning through personalization, support for teachers, and students aligned to college and career-ready curriculum; increase the effectiveness of educators and expand access to the most effective educators; decrease the achievement gap; and increase the rate at which students graduate prepared for college and careers.
High-quality expanded learning time (ELT) schools are closing the achievement gap and raising performance for high-needs students across the country, providing important models worthy of replication. NCTL believes that high-quality ELT schools are uniquely well-suited to accomplish each of the goals of this round of Race to the Top.
I ask that you visit the Department of Education website and “like” our recommendation. A strong show of support will guarantee that expanded learning time will be seriously considered for inclusion in this round of Race to the Top.

Listen To The Voices of Teachers

By Blair Brown on June 5, 2012 – 3:41pm

This blog post originally appeared in the News and Updates section of the Time to Succeed Coalition website.

When I tell people what I do, an early question is often, “Well, what do teachers think about that?” And at times, if you follow the news, you’d think it is all negative – that teachers do not support expanding learning time.

However, after working in this field for close to five years, I can tell you that the opposite is true. Teachers are largely supportive of expanding learning time. We know that teachers are craving for more time to collaborate with their colleagues, to look at assessment data, and to individualize their instruction.
And we know that for an expanded-time school to be successful, teachers must be empowered, feel supported, and the quality of the instruction must be top-notch. We are so pleased that both Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Dennis Van Roekel, president of the National Education Association, have joined TSC as featured signatories as well as many teachers from expanded-time schools.
Unfortunately, today’s typical school schedule rarely permits the time teachers need or want to meet their goals. With more time, teachers have the power to transform the way they deliver their lessons and the way in which they lead their schools to higher achievement. Teachers at successful expanded-time schools spend substantial amounts of time working with administrators, instructional coaches, and colleagues to engage in thoughtful lesson-planning that takes into consideration student needs, effective teaching practices, and clear objectives for student learning.
We are also finding that expanded learning time empowers teachers to take on leadership roles within their schools. When teachers are charged to make change and given a voice in how to help one another improve their practice, transformations can come with consensus and allegiance. When students have more instructional time in their day to learn and grow, the school’s learning environment is remarkably enhanced. And both teachers and students reap the benefits. But don’t just take our word for it; you can listen to the voices of teachers.

Chicago Public Schools Undertaking Ambitious Effort to Expand Learning Time District-Wide

By Megan Britt on May 29, 2012 – 4:13pm
With more than 600 schools participating, the Chicago Public Schools is taking on the nation’s most ambitious effort to date to expand learning time district-wide. Early this school year, Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard issued the challenge to Chicago’s schools to increase school time from an average of 5-hour- and-45-minute day to a 7-hour day in order to improve student achievement and provide a well-rounded educational experience for all of Chicago’s 435,000 students. With NCTL’s guidance, supported in part by The Chicago Public Education Fund, Chicago Public Schools has been working with its network superintendents to implement a school-based planning process to help schools rethink and expand their school day.
While there are important details yet to be determined, the Full School Day initiative is moving towards implementation, with the support of 66 percent of parents of Chicago Public Schools students. By studying Chicago’s early adopters, such as Chicago’s Pioneer Schools, NCTL continues to learn from those on the ground to further inform the larger district roll-out. NCTL is also partnering with the VIVA Teacher Project, a unique initiative that empowers teachers to have a voice in the process.

From the State House to District Schools: Colorado Prioritizes More Learning Opportunities for Its Students

By Lisa Pryor on May 24, 2012 – 10:26am

Expanding learning opportunities for students is a priority for Colorado’s education leaders, with budding initiatives in districts across the state. The state’s bold vision to redesign the school experience for its students was developed by the statewide Expanded Learning Opportunities (ELO) Commission which released its report in the fall. Interest is particularly deep and wide in Colorado’s mile-high city where Superintendent Tom Boasberg has made expanded learning time a priority for middle schools. In August, as many as seven Denver schools are expected to launch expanded school schedules after participating in a nine-month planning process to redesign their school days and years. With ongoing technical assistance from NCTL and district leadership, these schools are poised to become district pioneers for expanding learning time.

Just north of Denver in the Adams 12-Five Star Schools district, four schools are also studying how an expanded school calendar could benefit their students. District and school leaders from Adams 12 participated in a “Seeing is Believing Tour” of Expanded Learning Time schools in Massachusetts in February and in onsite coaching with NCTL throughout the year. School leaders in Sheridan, Boulder Valley, and Aurora are also taking advantage of expanded learning time opportunities to propel student growth and school improvement. Colorado’s teachers are deeply involved and invested in the conversation about expanded learning time, as NCTL and the Southwest Teachers Union Reform Network have an ongoing partnership to ensure that their teachers are well-educated about and participate in the planning for expanded learning time.

Much of NCTL’s work in Colorado is the result of its partnership with the Colorado Legacy Foundation (CLF) and the Rose Community Foundation to build awareness of the benefits and opportunities of expanded learning time. Below is a great video produced by CLF on this topic.

NCTL Telly Awards

By Blair Brown on May 23, 2012 – 11:57am

This is a guest post by NCTL’s Director of Communications & External Affairs, Blair Brown.

At the risk of being too self-promotional, I am proud to announce that NCTL, with Ingram Content Media, has won our second Telly Award in two years for our videos featuring the work of expanded learning time schools. (See this year’s winners here, here and here. Last year’s winners are here and here.) These videos are an incredible team effort from beginning to end and we are proud of the recognition.
The honor, though, goes far beyond our organization and our production team. I think it truly belongs to the students, teachers, administrators, parents, and partners whom we are capturing on film. When we ask a school if we can come in and film their school, this is truly no small ask. We do our best to be “flies on the wall” and simply capture what it means to be an expanded learning time school – whether that means filming a 4th class as they learn mathematics, a karate class, or a teacher meeting.
Our job is only to get on tape what is already happening in schools and play that back for the rest of the world to see. And if that is winning awards, then those schools deserve the credit. So the award winners are…drum roll please…Brooklyn Generation School, Edwards Middle School, Fort Logan Elementary School, Jacob Hiatt Magnet School, KIPP Heartwood Academy, and Rocketship Mateo Sheedy Elementary School.

NCTL’s Work with Adams 12 Five Star Schools

By Lisa Pryor on May 21, 2012 – 9:58am

This is a guest post by Lisa Pryor, NCTL’s Senior Advisor for State & District Engagement.

There is nothing more exciting for us here at NCTL than engaging with schools about the power of expanded learning time to transform their work. I am particularly excited to build on the momentum of our recent work with a dynamic group of educators and administrators from Colorado’s fifth largest school district, Adams12 Five Star Schools. After our recent trip, we’re confident that the leadership teams from Riverdale Elementary, Woodglenn Elementary, Malley Drive Elementary and STEM Launch are ready to think even more deeply and strategically about the promise of high-quality expanded learning time. Next up are deep discussions and tough decisions about using expanded time to boost student achievement through strengthened instruction, targeted academic interventions/supports and engaging enrichment opportunities that support their school-wide instructional focus.
It would have been all too easy for our Adams 12 friends to get bogged down by local school budget cut headlines and buzz about testing and teacher evaluations, but they didn’t. Rather, these teams engaged in three highly focused, collaborative study sessions or “conversations” that examined seven best practices for high-quality expanded learning time schools. What resonated most with the schools was using time to build a culture of high expectations and mutual accountability. After a quick examination of the case studies and the video below, the teams discussed their own school culture and accountabilities, both for students and themselves. Each team approached the study with their own lens, but all determined to construct a stronger framework of expectations; all the while understanding that implementing that framework will take a plan, practice, and placing a priority on time. Using time to assess and analyze data was a close second priority for the teams as they explored how expanded learning time schools benefit from deep, consistent, regular discussions with teacher teams about their shared students’ data (quantitative and qualitative, scientific and anecdotal).

The team will continue these conversations with their full faculty in the coming days as they reflect on the other study session discussion topics, including Using Time to Provide a Well-Rounded Education, Strengthening Instruction Through Teacher Collaboration Time, and Focusing on a Few Shared Instructional Goals. We’ll be ready to step in and facilitate more conversation, more planning, and hopefully an expansion of student learning time as soon as they are ready!

Why Arts?

By David Farbman on May 14, 2012 – 2:54pm

I’ve been thinking a lot about the arts lately. We are in the final stages of preparing a report on the arts in expanded-time schools and, as I spend these weeks visiting and writing about schools with strong arts programs, I’ve come away with a new appreciation of just how much impact arts education can have on children’s lives.

One of the schools I visited—the Cole Arts and Sciences Academy in Denver—is headed by Julie Murgel, an innovative principal, who is crystal clear about their effect. She talks almost lovingly of how the many arts opportunities in her school are key to developing in her students the higher-order thinking skills that they will need to thrive in the 21st century. Principal Leo Flanagan of the Clarence Edwards Middle School in Boston points to the fact that his school—which has both the time and the institutional commitment to dedicate about two hours a day to arts programming—offers proof of the value of music and visual arts and theater for student’s academic performance. The Edwards school is one of the very few in the state to post high growth in both ELA and math for two years running.
But, in some ways, these arguments for arts education—how they promote behaviors and learning that lead to strong cognitive skills—miss the point. What is most striking about the students in these schools we met is how participation in whatever form of art they are involved in ignites a flame. A Cole eighth grader explained to me that, yes, her elective in Shakespeare has enabled her to be a better communicator in her academic classes, but what really mattered to her was that the activity allowed her to follow her passion. “I just love acting,” she muses.
Similarly, we heard a group of students wax on about how their participation in band or in the school musical has, and I quote “changed my life.” Consider what Yvonne had to say about her own experience: “Ever since sixth grade when I auditioned for Grease, musical theater has taught me how to feel comfortable and communicate with others. It makes me feel good just being there, like I’m home. I come to school and do my work, but I can’t wait to get to theater and express who I am and show my real personality.”
Of course, this uplifting testimony does not come about by accident. It takes the intense devotion of faculty and administrators in these schools to be sure that the enrichments are of high quality, that students have the chance to choose in what activities they want to participate, and, of course, that there is sufficient time to allow these interests to bloom into real passions. Because these schools have substantially more time in the school day, they can allow students to spend serious time practicing their dance routines or perfecting their paintings and, then, through this hard work these kids are able to develop the love they need to improve. It is a virtuous cycle enabled by the very simple—but oh so difficult—matter of committing sufficient time.
Keep your eyes peeled for when we release the full study on arts sometime this summer so you can get a full picture of just how valuable these programs can be.

How to Learn in the 21st Century

By Chris Gabrieli on May 11, 2012 – 4:24pm

This post was writte by Luis Ubiñas, president of the Ford Foundation, and Chris Gabrieli, Chair of the National Center on Time and Learning. They co-chair the Time to Succeed Coalition. This article is cross-posted on the Huffington Post.

Imagine waking up in the morning and taking a horse and buggy to the office. Or doing your work with a quill and ink by candlelight. It’s unimaginable. Yet every day we ask millions of children to make do in an education system designed for life in the 1800s.

That should be unimaginable, too.

There has been plenty of talk about school reform over the last 20 years. And there have been plenty of breakthrough experiments. But very little has taken hold across our schools, across America, that truly alters the game for our children.

The education gap remains vast and is growing. Our children are falling further behind children in other countries — children they will compete with in this global economy.

Here’s one idea that could change that: Expand and redesign the school day.

You may imagine the 8 to 3 school day, and the part-time school year, to be sacrosanct. After all, they worked in the 1950s, didn’t they? But the world today is very different from 40 or 50 years ago. And the way we design learning time should be different, too.

Already 1,000 schools across the country are showing how more and better learning time boosts achievement. A growing body of research suggests that kids who spend more time in school score better on standardized tests, are more likely to graduate, and are more likely to land internships or apprenticeships.

Why? Well, with expanded learning time there is a greater focus on core subjects, but also areas that often get short-changed, like music, arts, athletics, tutoring, and programs that connect schools to their larger communities. Activities that keep students engaged and motivated.

For teachers, it means more time to plan and learn with other teachers. For parents, an extended day is a better match with busy work lives. And for children growing up in at-risk neighborhoods, a redesigned day keeps them off the streets and out of trouble.

We know there are great after-school programs in many places. They’ve helped show the power of keeping students engaged after the schools are shut. Embracing that movement, what we need to do now is throw away our 1800s playbook and design a learning day for our 21st century global economy. We need to give our children more time to learn.

We’ve joined a diverse mix of leaders who have signed on to the idea. This coalition, announced on May 10, is called Time to Succeed, and it takes this impressive grassroots movement and gives it a national voice. It includes such thoughtful figures as former Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, Newark’s Democratic Mayor Cory Booker, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, Geoff Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone, Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, Peter Orzag of Citigroup, Eli Broad, mayors and superintendents in cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston and the District of Columbia, as well as community organizations like Citizen Schools and City Year, and many, many others.

If we want American kids to compete and thrive in today’s world, then re-imagining the school day needs to be something we each take up as a cause — in our own schools, in our own towns, and all across the country. In this election year we’ll be hearing a lot of talk about the future of the country, but expanded learning time is something concrete we can each take action on.

We urge you to look into what it means and how it can work. Just visit the Time to Succeed website to see what you can do. For our kids, it’s about time.

Introducing the Time to Succeed Coalition

By Blair Brown on May 10, 2012 – 9:07am

This is a guest post from NCTL’s Director of Communications & External Affairs and the National Director of the Time to Succeed Coalition, Blair Brown.

Over the past several months, I’ve had the exciting and unique opportunity to be at the center of building the Time to Succeed Coalition (TSC). Over the coming months, you can expect to see a lot of TSC as we continue to build the ELT movement and capture the energy and excitement around expanded learning time. As we launch this campaign, I wanted to take a moment to introduce both the coalition and our team.

What is TSC? The Time to Succeed Coalition is truly just that – a coalition. TSC is an umbrella for all of the voices who know that the current school schedule is not enough time to do what we need to for the children in our nation’s neediest communities. It is, of course, more than just a gathering place or a website. TSC is a call to action. We will work nationally, state-by-state, and community-by-community to continue to build the movement of expanded learning time schools across the country. From TSC, you can expect to see on-the-ground work in helping communities catalyze action around ELT as well as news updates and action alerts.

Who is TSC? I want to first acknowledge our signatories. Over 100 people have signed on to our platform to date. From the presidents of both teachers’ unions to business leaders, academics and civil rights leaders, superintendents and charter school leaders, parents and principals, TSC brings together a broad and diverse group of leaders in support of expanding learning time. But this is just the beginning.

None of this would be possible, of course, without strategic leadership and guidance. For TSC, that critical component has come from the Ford Foundation and, from our home base, the National Center on Time & Learning. This unique partnership of two organizations committed to a country where “more and better learning time” is the norm in K-12 education forms the foundation of TSC.

Every day, you will see updates, blogs, alerts, and tweets from a dedicated TSC staff. I am joined by my colleagues, Michael Pernick and Julia Falk, and we come to work every day dedicated to doing our part to ensure that all children, whether in Boston, Oklahoma City, or Los Angeles, have the time they need to succeed in school and beyond.

Please join us! Our movement is only as strong as the people who join, and we need you to stand with us, to advocate, and to lead. If you are a teacher, administrator, parent, school board member, community leader, or a concerned citizen, and you believe in the power of expanded learning time, we hope you will join the Time to Succeed Coalition. I am looking forward to our work together in the months ahead!

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