Get ready for a longer school day
FOR MORE than 20 years, educators have known that children would do better in school if the calendar were expanded. The seminal 1983 report ''A Nation at Risk" recommended that school districts consider seven-hour schedules as well as a 200- to 220-day school year.
In 1994 the National Education Commission on Time and Learning in its report ''Prisoners of Time" reached the same conclusion: The United States should significantly expand its conventional school calendar to accommodate the demands of education reform efforts.
In 1995 the Massachusetts Time and Learning Commission concluded that our state would never reach the high academic standards we set for all children unless and until our schools included more time.
As recently as 2004, Governor Romney called for a longer school day in Massachusetts. But so far nothing has been done to break the back of the 180 six-hour-day school calendar.
That's about to change. The Legislature provided $500,000 in next year's budget for planning grants to school districts to help them significantly expand learning time in some or all of their schools. In September, 20 school districts applied for grants. And the Department of Education recently selected 16 of the 20 districts to receive funding. These districts will have until January to submit proposals to extend their schedules. If their plans are approved by the Department of Education, they would be eligible for funding through the FY-07 budget and begin implementing plans in the 2006-2007 school year.
Successful planning for these schools depends in part upon getting the details right. How can a school best design and implement a longer school schedule? How will teacher schedules and pay change? How will bus schedules be reconfigured around a different schedule? How will teaching have to change if there is more class time? How can we engage students in project-based learning and experiential education that more class time allows? How will schools build in more enrichment activities to supplement the core academic classes?
There are no hard and fast answers. To understand these issues better, Massachusetts 2020 examined seven public schools that run an extended schedule in order to dissect how these schools operate on a schedule that has deliberately broken with the conventional. Last week we shared our findings with the school districts that are selected for the planning grants (as well as with the broader public). But the bottom line is this: Giving kids the time they need to learn can be done, and it can be done well. Schools know that it can be difficult to make all the pieces work, but parents, teachers, and students believe it is worth the effort.
Perhaps the most difficult challenge will be overcoming the inertia that too often stymies positive change, especially change of this magnitude. Will all parties -- school committees, superintendents, teachers, and parents -- demonstrate the will to make these schools work by participating in the process with an open mind? Will they be imaginative about redesigning school calendars not just to offer more of the same but a better product made possible through more time? Will the Legislature come through with the funding to implement the plans? These questions will be answered in the coming months.
For now, Massachusetts is once again an educational pioneer. It is poised to be the first state in the nation to act on the common-sense observation that if we expect our children to learn more than previous generations, they must have more time in which to reach this goal.
In a modern economy in which our children must compete daily with peers in other states and across the globe, we see the truth of the cliché: Time (at least as we currently define it) is not on our side.
Chris Gabrieli is chairman of Massachusetts 2020.
