Literature+Review

Shannon Montague=purple Patrick Ko=green Lauren Hamilton = blue Introduction** In 1983’s “A Nation at Risk,” members of the National Commission on Excellence in Education examined the current state of schools in the United States. The overall consensus was that schools were failing. Among other findings, one area that was concerning to the commission members was the length of the school day and school year, as compared to other countries. In their recommendations, they stated a need for children to be in school longer each day and to attend school longer each year. In addition, they recommended that the use of time in schools be changed. They called for a more efficient use of time in the classroom, focusing more time on real student instruction, rather than other time consuming **classroom management** activities, such as discipline.
 * Shannon Baker=black

The reasoning for these recommendations was not based on actual studies that compared schools to each other. Rather, it seemed common sense and was assumed that the lack of overall time in schools and the amount of non-instructional time in schools played a role in America’s educational failure. The effects of these time differences in schools are to be determined. While this is a common difference between American education and foreign schools, research data is needed to conclude if keeping students physically in school longer will result in increased academic achievement. In addition, the consideration of different types of schooling in America needs to be included. Because school reform is focused mostly on public education, studies on this topic have followed suit. We are interested if time and use of time in school may have different effects in independent schools, where **(use of instructional time?)** as a result of educational approaches **(can be)** are often drastically different from their public counterparts.


 * Previous Research on Time in School**

As far back as 1937, researchers have been looking to examine the effects of length of school day. When sent questionnaires on the length of their school day, superintendants of schools and directors of training schools from 100 mid-western cities cited huge differences between their schools in this measure. In addition, differences between grade levels also existed (Knox, 1937). These findings indicated that we have always had different views, even within our own country, of what adequate daily school time should be.

Of course, an area where time in school has been researched is in the primary grades, where kindergartners often have the option to attend school for a full-day or a half-day. Findings have shown that kindergartners who attended full-day school had increased rates of language acquisition as compared to their half-day counterparts. However, variables such as class size and student-teacher ratio affected these results. As class sizes got larger, full-day kindergartner’s language acquisition decreased (Zvoch, Reynolds, & Parker, 2008). It is clear that time is a variable that can be assessed within a classroom as well. Although students get more learning time if they are in school longer each day, the amount of personal “teacher time” can play a positive role in student learning as well.

Even in secondary education, similar benefits have been shown. As Chile attempted to change their own educational structure in high schools from a “shift” system where students attended either morning or evening sessions to a full-day system, researchers used the opportunity to examine possible changes in academic achievement between the two systems. As expected, students who attended the full-day schedule had higher achievement scores on the national standardized test in both math and language than the students who attended school in “shifts.” These findings are very interesting, especially if the format of instruction in the classroom remained similar for both groups tested (as this was a change from one format to another). If other variables could be controlled such as //how// teachers instruct their students and time was the only variable changed, these findings could have significant implications.

**The United States began to make its own changes to school schedule based on the work of John Goodlad in 1984 who argued that the traditional high school schedule did not allow students enough time for individualized instruction, laboratory time, remediation or enrichment. This, along with "A Nation at Risk" led to the adoption of the "block schedule" in many schools. The block scheduling model is one that allows for longer periods of time spent in each subject area with fewer periods per day. The hope of this model is to increase the instructional time offered to students each day. The results in the United States have been not shown substantial benefits to the block scheduling systems. Research findings show that block scheduling students performed significantly less well on standardized math achievement tests than their peers with traditional schedules and no difference was found in standardized reading and writing scores. Students with a block schedule did have consistently higher grade point averages though (Cobb, & Abbate, 1999). Again, the question arises //how// do teachers use their instructional time with their students, and research on block scheduling finds that without training, teachers plan for only about 50-60 minutes of instruction and use the additional 30 or so minutes of class time ineffectively (Queen, 2000).**

Education critics often call for longer school days and years, but there is little research to support such demands and several reasons why little will change (Cuban 2008). It is a solution that is least connected to what happens in classrooms or what Americans want from public schools. Cost, weak research, and the importance of conservative social goals of taxpayers and voters explain why the proposals to fix time I schools have failed. Business elites call for more time by connecting declining global economic competitiveness with school time. Policy elites, limited to budget and electoral cycles, drives policies in schools that don’t address what matters to teachers and students. Parents want schools to act as extended child care centers. Teachers never have enough time, and students want less time in school – there are conflicting goals and interests on many levels. But the goal that really matters – improving the quality of the time spent gets lost in these complicated conflicts of interest (Cuban, 2008).

The school calendar that we follow today came into effect around the same time that compulsory education laws were established. As the government declared that children must attend school, calendars were devised to organize these children. The calendar evolved as it took into account issues from child labor to farming to the extreme heat and high frequency of summer epidemics. (Weiss & Brown, 2003) Today these issues are completely irrelevant. In fact, many public schools throughout the country are forced to open over the summer to educate students that will otherwise be repeating grades. President Obama and Secretary Duncan are currently looking abroad for a better calendar model. Schools in areas such as Taiwan, Japan, and Hong Kong have school years as long as 200 days compared to 180 in the United States public schools. However, compared with education systems around the world, American students have a relatively high amount of hours in instruction during each school day, balancing out the shorter school year. With so many hours spent in school, why is achievement so low compared with these other nations?

Despite these longer days, schools are still running out of instruction time each day. One reason for this is the rise in school policies that require an exorbitant amount of time from teachers and administrators. Marilyn Crawford states, “When the dust settles, there are many more requirements than can be implemented, leaving mandates mathematically impossible for school leaders.” (Crawford, 2008, p. 251) This is not to discredit the policies that are being put in place. These policies are often attempts to problem solve in education. However, policies continue to be added and rarely taken away. Educators simple do not have the time to implement all of the policies required of them. Crawford proposes a different approach for developing, funding, and implementing policies on time in schools, referred to as a “policy sandbox.” In this approach, administrators and policy makers engage in a conversation providing practitioners with a “voice in the development of initial policies” while policy makers “gain an understanding of the implementation process.” While Crawford is not necessarily an advocate of lengthening the school day or year, her research provides a strong case outlining the overall lack of time in the school day.

**The prevailing reality in studies shows that time in itself is not the panacea to raise student achievement. In 2007, Education Sector, an independent think-tank that "challenges conventional thinking in educational policy," examined the complexity of time in schools. While a seemingly simple correlation might be made between instructional time and student achievement, the research proves the relationship to be more complex. The extended time proposal must focus on the right kind of time, rather than just extending time. The correlation between time and achievement is greatest when students are given more "academic learning time" or time devoted to students gaining and retaining subject knowledge (Silva, 2007).** If students are in school for 7 hours, as was recommended by “A Nation at Risk,” but they only receive 3 hours of quality instruction, we cannot rely on overall time constraints to draw our conclusions.
 * Previous Research on Use of Time in School**

While being in school longer each day may have an affect on student learning, those in the classroom know well that how teachers and schools use their time is also a very important question. Of great concern for parents and educators alike, is the inclusion of recess into the school day. Research has shown that exercise from recess is beneficial to students’ academic achievement; even when that recess takes away time students spend in the classroom (Zygmunt-Fillwalk, & Bilello, 2005). While a movement in public schools especially, has been the removal of recess to accommodate more time for direct academic instruction, these findings ask that school administrators question these types of decisions.

As schools consider how to best structure the school day, questions of student support are of great concern. In middle and high schools, “advisory” time is often designed to allow students to bond with a particular teacher and receive individual support. While this time is often not used effectively in schools, if used well, students can benefit from focused time on homework and counseling for academic achievement (Coleman, 2001). In a study based on questionnaire responses given to advisors and students in three different schools, both advisors and students (especially in advisories found to have high levels of connectedness) stated that they felt their advisory program directly improved student achievement. Reasons given for this opinion was direct academic support, strategizing, goal setting, and belonging to a peer group striving for success (Shulkind, & Foote, 2009). Of equal importance in this realm, how teachers use the time they are given in the classroom can greatly affect student outcomes. In order to examine this, Douglas Fisher (2009) “shadowed” three high school students in a large, suburban school to see how their instructional time was used. An overwhelming amount of time was spent with students listening and waiting, not on active learning involving reading, writing, or work with peers. He felt that a lot of time was wasted in the classrooms he examined. Additionally, a study of instructional time in Chicago public schools showed an exorbitant amount of time lost to special school days, building maintenance, substitute teaching as well as everyday classroom management issues. This study found that the schools observed provided only 40-60% of the districts goal of actual instruction time (Smith, 2000). As we examine the length of the school day and its effect on student achievement, we must also investigate how educators make use of their time within this school day.


 * Independent Schools** and Charter Schools

Prior research examining the use of time in schools and school schedules has largely focused on public schools. This makes sense, considering government mandates, such as NCLB, put high stakes on student achievement and schools make changes to accommodate those mandates. However, independent and private schools benefit from the freedom to make these choices for their own reasons. Regardless of the impetus for making time decisions in schools, the effects of time use need to be examined in many different school environments. Perhaps without the policy constraints present in public education, independent schools are freer to make better decisions in regard to time. This study attempts to shine light on this different sector of private education to reveal not only effective teacher and school practices, but also how time practices are an effect of school sector.
 * Independent schools offer the ability to focus on time in a way that public schools have not be able. The flexible schedule of a variety of independent schools will allow us to look at not only time not only as hours in the day but how faculty and administration choose to use their time. The independent school might be able to serve as a model to other schools as having the right mix of all factors that play into creative effective school time. Massachusetts 2020, a non-profit organization that is studying the extended time movement in Massachusetts, found that while extended time is important for school success, other factors are equally important including, strong leaders, excellent teachers, high student expectations, careful monitoring of performance and a safe, supportive nurturing school environment. The extended time proposal of "A Nation at Risk" looked at only a part of the overall solution of higher student achievement. Are independent schools environments the ones that have the all of these pieces of the puzzle?**

On a broader level, many areas need to be considered, including government, nonprofit initiatives, charter schools, the cross-fertilization of education, youth-development, after-school programs, cost, scheduling strategies, and the youth worker’s role (Gewertz, 2009). Charter schools particularly can be an informative source of comparison in the issue of time - two-thirds of them use their freedom from regulation to adopt longer days or years. KIPP, for example have programs that span 8-1/2 hours a day, every other Saturday, and three weeks of the summer. Independent researchers who studied KIPP have reported that students make significant academic gains while at KIPP schools. **The impetus behind the KIPP school extended day model was informed by the research that more time equals more learning. The KIPP model understands that in order to bridge the achievement gap there must be more time to teach content. The KIPP models also understands though that while the answer of students needing more time is a yes, schools actually boost learning by more time and five mutually reinforcing they describe as: 1) more time on task, 2) depth and breadth, 3) greater opportunities for planning and professional development, 4) greater opportunities for enrichment and experiential learning, and 5) stronger adult-child relationships (Massachusetts 2020, 2005).** Student achievement can be measured in many different ways; students are multi-faceted themselves. As a result, this study needs to take into account many different measures of student achievement to have higher quality results.
 * Measurement Tools**