By now you have heard that Barack Obama wants to extend the school year by increasing the 21st Cenutry Learning Community grants. This is not the first time Obama has argued the point that the school year is too short for the United States to be competitive. President Obama wants to extend the school year to 195 or greater days. Last Fall I received an edition of Review of Educational Research, which included an article by Erika Patall and colleagues assessing the research on extended school day or school year. The summarizing statement on the impact on achievement says: (1) in a worst case scenario extending the day or year has no impact on achievement. In the best case scenario there may be a small relationship on achievement, but the magnitude remains difficult to measure. (2) Extending school time for students at risk for failure is likely beneficial. This finding is consistent with the research on summer learning loss for at risk students.
Patall concludes that “extending school time can be an effective way to support student learning, particularly (a) for students most at risk of school failure and (b) when considerations are made for how time is used.” Thus, school districts planning to extend the day or year cannot depend on time alone to make a difference, but to maximize the return of the taxpayers they must make this change in a framework (a system) that includes improving instructional strategies on the whole. If a focus is placed on ensuring that both time and quality are enhanced, then this will be a worthwhile decision.
From the performance management/strategy perspective this means that school districts must make this decision to extended their day/year when they have sufficiently improved instructional quality. Districts must be actively measuring instructional quality (using measures such as spot observations and evaluations rather than just test scores) to ensure that when extended day/year is implemented they can show their taxpayers that it will result in meaningful results.
In schools or districts where large groups of students (50, 60,70%) need to be taught English, I believe that extending the school day absolutely makes sense. In Adams 14, around 2/3 of our elementary students need to have a 45 minute English Language Development (ELD) block daily. Something has to give in the schedule so the students don’t get instruction in Social Studies or Science. If only the students came to school an hour early for explicit language instruction we could seriously impact performance.
I agree. I think what matters is what you do with the time, not just that there is extra time. Most of the initiaitives now pushing for extra time have not addressed “effective instruction” or best use of that time. Just more.