Harnessing the Power of Expanded Time to Improve Schools: A Study of Three Districts

Harnessing the Power of Expanded Time to Improve Schools A Study of Three Districts

By David A. Farbman August 2011 1

Harnessing the Power of Expanded Time to Improve Schools A Study of Three Districts

By David A. Farbman August 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS I. The Turnaround Challenge and More Time ............................................................ 2 II. Providing Students More Time for Learning .......................................................... 4 III. Strengthening Teaching ............................................................................................. 8 IV. The District’s Role in Managing School Reform ................................................... 12 V. Lessons Learned ........................................................................................................... 15 VI. The Future of School Improvement ........................................................................ 17 Endnotes.............................................................................................................................. 18 Appendix A : A Brief Summary of the Three District Initiatives ............................ 20 Appendix B : School Demographics.............................................................................. 22 Appendix C : Student Outcomes, 2007 – 2010 ............................................................ 24

I . The Turnaround Challenge and More Time

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or all that is new within American schools over the last few years — more rigorous learning standards, technologies that transform classrooms into more dynamic spaces, and monumental shifts in how teacher professional development is organized, to name a few — there has been virtually no change in one of school’s most basic elements : the amount of time students have to learn. Indeed, the standard calendar that averages about 180 six-and-a-half hour days has been in place for the better part of a century. Amidst the rapidly changing world of education, the school calendar seems, more than ever, to have become what the National Commission on Time and Learning called a “prison of time [because] the boundaries of student growth are defined by schedules for bells, buses, and vacations instead of standards for students and learning.” 1

These tight boundaries are especially detrimental in schools serving large portions of children in poverty, because children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to enter school already behind their more affluent peers and research shows that, absent more time in productive learning environments, these gaps in skill and knowledge are likely to continue to widen. 2 Understanding that the standard time allotment no longer meets the acute needs of so many learners,

a number of large-city superintendents, have, over the last decade, taken significant steps to loosen the binds of the traditional calendar by expanding the school day or year (or both) in some of their most challenged schools. These superintendents assert that, in combination with other high-impact educational practices like implementing data-driven instruction and fostering professional learning communities, the addition of more time will heighten the potential to transform persistently underperforming schools.

The Obama Administration, as part of its school improvement agenda, has now brought the experience and ambitions of these urban districts to the national stage.

Through the re-vamped School Improvement Grant (SIG) program, the U.S. Department of Education has distributed over $ 3.5 billion to the nation’s lowest-performing schools to implement a series of reforms, including what it calls “Increased Learning Time.” 3 Although this initiative to promote widespread school transformation using expanded time is still quite young, its burst of funding represents perhaps the most substantial coordinated effort in American history to enable schools to break from the conventional educational calendar.

Learning from the Field The National Center on Time & Learning, an organization dedicated to expanding learning time to improve student achievement and facilitate a well-rounded education, recognizes that this opportunity to enable large numbers of schools to expand time also comes with risks and unknowns.

Time can be a powerful resource for improving learning, but its power can quickly dissipate if teachers and administrators do not harness it effectively. A recent survey revealed that only a small portion of schools have familiarity with the kind of rapid and substantial transformation that the SIG program requires, and so, most practitioners

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would likely benefit from knowing more about the experiences of other schools and districts that have, in fact, carried out similar efforts. 4 This qualitative analysis of three districts, which have already undertaken (and continue to undertake) courses of action that expand time for all enrolled students in a target number of schools, seeks to describe in detail how expanded time can lead to more learning opportunities for students and, indeed, catalyze more far-reaching school transformation.

The reform initiatives considered in this study are : the Superintendent’s School

Improvement District (SSID) in Buffalo, New York ; the Accelerated Learning Academies (ALAs) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania ; and the Plus One schools in Volusia County, Florida.

In each case, the districts have supplied the financial support needed to make possible a longer day, and, in some cases, a longer year, for all enrolled students in the targeted schools. (The supplemental dollars are dedicated primarily to higher compensation for teachers and/or for supplemental staff needed to put expanded time into practice.)

These districts deserve study because they are three of the very few examples in the country of coordinated and lasting efforts — each had been in place at least four years in spring 2010, when the research was conducted — to provide additional time in a select number of schools.

Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Volusia County schools are worthy of a joint examination, too, because of their shared theory of action.

For these districts, the additional time is intended not only to help particular students become proficient by furnishing them with more “time on task.” If that were the case, then each district could have adopted the traditional approach of providing more learning time to targeted students through mandated summer or after-school tutoring.

Instead, the districts have expanded the school schedule for all students because the leaders view time as a resource that can have a dual impact : affording more time on task to individual students, and, more broadly, enabling practices aimed at enhancing instructional quality to take hold across the school and for the long-term.

In these districts’ formulation, expanded time is not only highly valuable for student improvement, but also absolutely necessary for school improvement. 5 Even as the three districts share this underlying strategic approach, they operate entirely unconnected from one another.

Indeed, there is considerable variability among the districts in the ways in which

schools integrate more time into the school day and how the central office supports and oversees the initiative. (See Appendix A for details on the three initiatives and Appendix B for demographic data of the target schools.) This paper will detail some of these differences, while focusing primarily on the cross-cutting themes that emerge. The data collected on these districts come from site visits in Spring 2010 to each central office and three schools within each district. As part of these visits, the author conducted dozens of interviews with administrators, school leaders, academic content coaches, and teachers, and observed many classes and activities. Since this period of data collection, the schools and districts under review have undergone many changes, not the least of which includes the contraction or cancellation of programs. The information contained herein represents a picture of these initiatives at their most robust and written from the point of view of the observer at the time the research was conducted.

In the sections that follow, the school reform efforts are considered from several angles : (a) how students experience the expanded schedule and how modifications in the educational program are perceived to affect learning ; (b) how the schools transform the process of teacher professional development and enhancing instruction, and, further, how this effort might generate changes in school culture ; and (c) how the central office plays a role in helping to ensure that real reform takes root in the target schools (and, to some degree, across the district). The final section considers the knotty question of how districts explain the reality that, despite their sustained commitment of resources, attention, and leadership, the impact on student outcomes is highly variable among and within schools.

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II . Providing Students More Time for Learning

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ach of the three districts have added approximately one hour to the school day, with the belief that this extra time will increase the likelihood that teachers will be able to cover the curriculum in greater depth and, in turn, that a larger number of students will develop proficiency in the prescribed standards. The districts also have added time in order to build in opportunities for greater individualization of instruction. 6 As would be expected, there is some variability across subject districts and schools as to how schedules are designed and the time designations for each class. This variation results from a number of factors, including the strictness of district policy in fixing times for certain subjects, the needs of students, and the staff configurations at each school.

Yet, even within these variations, a clear consensus has developed within these

districts about how time is best applied to strengthen teaching and learning. The two key areas of time use are : (a) more dedicated time for academics — math and ELA at the elementary and middle-school levels (with Pittsburgh focusing on writing in particular) and for science at the elementary level ; and (b) more time for targeted academic support, usually in literacy. Further, each of the districts has some form of an expanded year (i.e., more instructional days per year for all or targeted students in the schools), which they use primarily to stretch the curriculum over a greater number of days. Educators in all three districts acknowledge that the additional daily minutes and days may still not be sufficient, although the extra time they do now have affords them expanded opportunity to take considerable strides toward boosting student achievement.

Enhancing Academics With public accountability focused primarily on reading (English Language Arts or ELA) and math, the additional time provided is typically directed toward these two subjects. 7 Districts also have found that a longer day allows them to furnish adequate time for these subjects and also to have ample time for those subjects like science and social studies that might get reduced in a school without more time available. This arrangement runs counter to national trends (at least in elementary schools), where ELA and math classes are given more time, at the expense of time in everything else, including art, music, science, and physical education. 8 Because the Buffalo district allows its individual schools to set their own schedules, the tendency across schools serving elementary grades is to double the amount of time for ELA from 60 to 120 minutes daily and to increase time in math from 60 to 90 minutes. The time devoted to both English and math has also doubled from 45 to 90 minutes in Buffalo’s middle grades. In part, these time additions resulted from having

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60 more minutes per day as well as from the reconfiguration of student schedules that accompanied the conversion to a longer day.

Even with these increases in time in ELA and math classes, however, the Buffalo schools have been able to hold time for science and social studies essentially constant.

Like Buffalo, Volusia County grants schools the flexibility to fix their own schedules, and so, there is some fluctuation school to school, even as there are many common components across the nine sites. The typical day in these Florida schools features 120 to 130 minutes per day for ELA (including writing), for most grades, and another 60 to 90 minutes for math. In both cases, these are not necessarily changes from pre-Plus One schedules, but rather alterations resulting from the central management of the scheduling (at the school level). That is, because students in K – 3 remain with the same teacher for all subjects (i.e., self-contained classrooms), teachers are, in practice, able to maintain more individual autonomy over what is taught and when. And, indeed, this is the

way teachers operated in pre-Plus One days.

With the consolidation of the scheduling, however, teachers are now expected to adhere strictly to the pre-determined amounts of time for each subject (known as a “common instructional schedule”). The two academic areas that have received an increase in time are science and social studies, where grades K – 3 devote about 30 minutes per day to each subject and the upper elementary grades give about 45 minutes. (In lower grades, these subjects alternate by day ; in higher grades, both tend to be taught daily while the time allocation for ELA is reduced somewhat to accommodate the other subjects.) Prior to the schedule expansion and centralized scheduled management, on some days these subjects would often be neglected.

Time allocations differ somewhat in Pittsburgh, where the district mandates the standard duration of ELA, math, and other classes, in all district schools and not only in the schools known as ALAs. Thus, the longer day brings no extended core academic periods. 9 What is unique to the ALA schools — as opposed to non-ALA schools in the district — is a daily 45-minute period reserved for writing. Non-ALA schools also have scheduled time for writing, but generally this writing period occurs about two times per week (rather than daily), and the writing period is subtracted out from the daily 90-minute ELA period. In the ALAs, by contrast, the writing period is scheduled on top of the 90 daily minutes of ELA instruction.

The curriculum for the writing period has been developed by the district and models the Writers’ Workshop (WW) design of America’s Choice, the educational content provider hired by the district to support the ALAs. In all three districts, teachers and principals assert a number of intermediate outcomes of the schedule modifications brought about by the expansion of school time. Pittsburgh teachers explain that the techniques practiced in WW spill over into other parts of the curriculum in three identifiable ways. First, students are noticeably at ease learning in a group setting, having become very used to accepting their peers’ ideas and insights on their writing. Over the course of the year, classrooms become “authentic learning communities,” where each individual is

capable of, and comfortable with, learning from others. Second, on a related point, students are frequently observed posing questions previously modeled by their teachers, such as “What do you think about this particular text?” or “How might you have expressed this idea differently?” Finally, and perhaps most importantly, teachers explain that the continuous tracking of one’s own writing progress encourages students to take responsibility for their own learning.

Moreover, teachers harbor little doubt that these benefits to students accrue specifically because of the daily practice of WW. Some explain that they notice that when students come to their ALA from other schools (either non-ALA schools within Pittsburgh or from outside the district), the new students, who were not previously exposed to daily writing practice, are not nearly as skilled or confident in either their writing or their class participation.

The expansion of the schedule in both Buffalo and Volusia, which coincided with a greater diligence (in the elementary grades) keeping to fixed times for particular subjects, has, by some accounts, precipitated an attitudinal shift among staff. With a focus on how time is spent and how schools might use this resource more efficiently, teachers, according to the principals, now tend to view their own classrooms as needing to optimize instructional time. Less time is spent off-task in activities like collecting papers or small talk with students. As one principal puts it, “Having more time in the schedule actually makes us more possessive of the time we have.” With increased attention paid to the pacing of classes (in addition to having more actual minutes of classroom time), teachers find they are able to cover the curriculum in greater depth than before.

They also claim to have more time to answer students’ questions and to review the work of individual students during class. One of the original Plus One teachers recalled that even within the first weeks of the program’s inception, she felt that class was less rushed and that both students and teachers experienced some psychological relief from the stresses of the classroom. In her words, “It was like a switch went off. We were all suddenly more relaxed and the new attitude allowed us to be more productive overall.”

Individualizing Support One of the common schedule-related curricular components present across the three districts is what are called academic support classes. These daily (or near daily) classes comprised of a very small number of students with a single instructor (on average, six to eight students per group)

are designed to target specific deficits in comprehension or skills. The objective of these support sessions (usually in literacy) is to group students of like ability together and then deliver targeted instruction. Groups of weaker students will practice and improve upon particular skills, while stronger students

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will have opportunities for to be continually challenged. The added time on task is, in this way, deliberately coordinated and focused.

Many district and school administrators note that the elements built into academic support spring from the rationale and methods of the Response to Intervention (RTI) process that has taken hold in thousands of schools around the country. 10 RTI originally began as a means to better identify students for special education services and, by extension, to reduce the number of students in substantially separate classes by intervening before learning deficits grew too severe. 11 Over the years, RTI has morphed into a more generalized approach to better meet student learning needs, not necessarily just the needs of students requiring significantly more academic supports. Thus, RTI has, in effect, become a means to enhance teaching quality by providing students the specific instruction that best matches their academic needs. At the expanded-time schools under review here, many educators note that in their previously shorter day, the RTI process had to be curtailed because academic support classes were less frequent (or nonexistent). Now, having fixed periods of at least 30 minutes several times per week for targeted support, their school is able to implement RTI’s tiered process as they believe it was designed , and with more noticeable impact. As a veteran principal in Pittsburgh describes, “Now that we have 50 minutes for academic support, instead of just 20 that we had before we were an ALA school, the support is finally having its intended effect.”

Though they vary in detail from school to school, academic support classes are a central feature of the Plus One model — not only assisting individual students, but also helping to shape school culture in positive ways. Their classes typically run daily for 30 to 45 minutes and are held at the same time across a pair of grades (i.e., K – 1, 2 – 3, and 4 – 5).

At the beginning of the year, administrators and faculty will break students down into a number of relatively small homogeneous groups (based on their past performance) of no more than 10 students. Because there are more than twice as many support groups as grade-level classroom teachers (an inevitable effect of breaking down classrooms into smaller cohorts), other faculty (instructional coaches, paraprofessionals, specialist teachers, and even administrators) act as instructors for these sessions. Teachers with more ability in teaching literacy typically are assigned to lower-skill groups, and adults with less experience take the higher-ability groups. Every six weeks or so, the group composition is revisited, and students who are either excelling or lagging may be moved to a group more appropriate for them.

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In Pittsburgh, all schools in the district (not just ALAs) are required to arrange for a period of academic support. In non-ALA schools the typical duration of this period is about 20 minutes, whereas in an ALA school, academic support runs 30 to 45 minutes. One elementary principal explains that prior to the conversion to an ALA, the school had set aside one hour for lunch and recess. With the reconstitution to a longer schedule and a commitment to squeeze more instructional time out of the day, that recess/lunch period shrank to 40 minutes, and this extra time was added to the academic support period. Here, the logistics of the academic support classes are similar to those in Volusia. The small Pittsburgh classes take place during one designated period every day (at each grade level), and students are distributed in small clusters across several classrooms, each covered by a teacher or an aide.

In Buffalo, these academic support classes, called “Walk Tos,” operate somewhat differently. Through this somewhat complicated system, teachers are given the ability to implement differentiated literacy programs to subgroups within individual classrooms, with the less capable students receiving a curriculum designed for struggling readers, while grade-level readers (and higher) receive exposure to supplementary texts. In some cases, students leave their classrooms ; in other cases they do not. Either way, students are benefiting from time each day in a smallergroup setting with the curriculum that is best suited to their particular level.

Three noteworthy intermediate outcomes appear to result from this system. First, teachers claim that the number of lowerlevel groups has declined over the years, especially in the upper grades, as more and more students have been able to become more proficient in reading. Buffalo elementary school principals explain, for instance, that during the years Walk Tos have been implemented, fewer fourth- and fifth-grade students have been placed in the “intensive” (i.e., highest need) sections, because they had learned more in their primary grades and, as they advance in grade level, have tested into the higher groups. Second, classroom teachers (and all faculty) are more methodically focused on meeting individual student learning needs during the small-group instruction sessions.

This degree of individualized attention is more difficult to deliver in larger classrooms.

Finally, the progress of particular students is no longer a concern only for those students’ classroom teachers. Instead, a much broader coalition of adults becomes jointly responsible for the academic growth of individual students. In turn, school

faculty describe the subtle impact on school culture that can result when the adults in the building feel a greater connection to a greater number — and, in some cases, wider

range — of students. As one Volusia teacher proudly declares, “Before we only paid attention to the kids in our own classrooms.

Now, all the kids in the school are ‘ours’.”

Getting a Head Start on the Year Along with adding more time every day school is in session, these three districts each offer their own version of adding instructional days to the year. For Volusia and Buffalo, the extra days are partially voluntary for the students, while in Pittsburgh there are added days built into the standard schedule for all students, in addition to voluntary classes during the summer. Interestingly, all three districts take the same general approach to how these days play a role in advancing learning. Rather than helping students to catch up on what they may have missed the previous year, the additional academic time is intended to “front load” students’ learning for the year to come. Pittsburgh overtly jump starts the upcoming academic year by scheduling its additional eight days of instruction at the beginning of the ALAs’ 188-day school year calendar. 12 Teachers claim that even though the additional days total fewer than two weeks, their students benefit greatly from getting a head start on their peers in nonALA schools. Because teachers are following a district curriculum pacing guide, they find that just these few days at the start of the year are sufficient in enabling them to keep up to where they are expected to be.

Moreover, in the last two years, Pittsburgh has significantly re-vamped its summer school program, now called “Summer Dreamers’ Academy,” by transitioning it from one that offered merely remedial support to one that is structured (and marketed to families) more like a camp. The wellpublicized focus on “fun” and “exploratory excursions” help to attract students and parents, all while the Summer Academy provides students with three hours daily of productive learning activities, aimed at better preparing them for the coming academic year, especially in literacy. During the first summer, over 1,200 middle-school students, many of whom were from the ALA schools, participated.

prevented him from securing an increase of the school year by the 20 days he had hoped to gain. Instead, the district settled for building on what already existed — a summer school for students who had not achieved proficiency on the state assessments in either math or reading. Any Buffalo student who is not proficient is required to attend the 20-day school in July. Proficient SSID students are also encouraged, but not required, to attend. Across the district, approximately one-third of all elementary and middle students in the district participate (a total of 8,000 – 10,000 students). Teachers agree to teach in the summer school, for pay, but are not contractually required to do so.

Volusia County, like Buffalo, has not added days to the schedules of the Plus One schools, but instead operates a district-wide summer school program for students identified in need of extra learning time, and these students are urged, though not mandated, to participate. The 16-day summer school for grades 1 – 5 runs for six hours daily (three hours for grades 6 – 12) and, in addition to math and reading preparation for the coming academic year, includes a hands-on science program that was developed by Volusia science teachers. Each year over 1,000 students attend, with the majority of students coming from younger grades.

In all three districts — and especially in Pittsburgh, where the extra days are built into the school calendar — teachers speak positively about the extra days of learning, frequently voicing the phrase “come to school ready to learn,” when describing the difference they observe in their students.

While the precise degree of effect of these additional days on student learning is difficult to pinpoint, certainly the perception among educators is that these days make a meaningful difference in students’ ability to achieve academic goals throughout the year.

When the Buffalo superintendent created the Superintendent’s School Improvement District, funding and labor considerations

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III . Strengthening Teaching

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n the three districts under review in this study, educators recognize that whole-school reform ultimately requires improving the instruction that takes place in the target schools. Further, district and school leaders appreciate that better instruction will not materialize out of thin air. As such, they have sought, first, to promote the methods and modes through which to re-shape pedagogy and, second, to dedicate the time needed to engage in substantive discussions that act as springboards for implementing these new methods.

What educators in each of the districts really desire is the creation in each school of professional learning communities (PLCs) — described by one scholar as “An ongoing process through which teachers and administrators work collaboratively to seek and share learning and to act on their learning, their goal being to enhance their effectiveness

as professionals for students’ benefit.” 13 Studies have shown that in schools which have developed viable PLCs, student achievement has increased significantly in math, reading, and science. 14 Some of the details concerning how PLCs look across each district and school differ, of course, but the system that has been created to support the development of schoollevel PLCs appears nearly identical in Buffalo, Volusia, and Pittsburgh. The system has three structural components : (a) time for teachers to meet, known as “collaborative planning time” ; (b) a focus on data-driven instruction ; and (c) a formal system of in-school coaching of individual teachers and groups of teachers.

With these three elements in place, teachers are then more likely to shift perceptions of their profession from being primarily about their own individual performance to one where they operate as part of a team, and where their own success as a teacher is intimately linked to the success of their fellow faculty members.

Teachers Collaborating to Improve Instruction Collaborative (or Common) Planning Time (CPT) is defined simply as those periods when academic teachers can meet uninterrupted (and not distracted by any other responsibilities) to interact with one another as peers and as professionals about student learning issues.

Research indicates that PLCs are more likely to form in schools that incorporate regularly scheduled blocks of time for collaboration, with one study suggesting that having regular time to meet is the overriding reason why PLCs take shape in the first place. In contrast, in schools without these set-aside times, a cooperative culture among teachers may be less likely to develop. 15 The reason is that these frequent, and somewhat structured, interactions serve as the forum through which to foster the trust and shared agenda of student improvement that underlies PLCs. The National Staff Development Council notes that the United States is “far behind” other advanced nations in setting aside opportunities for teachers to collaborate. 16 And staff in the three districts under review offer anecdotal confirming evidence, asserting that prior to the

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addition of time at their schools they, too, did not have regular times set aside during the school day for teachers to meet. Moreover, some teachers mention that they have heard from colleagues in their district’s non-expanded-time schools that in these other settings, teachers’ CPT sessions occur much less frequently.

The “look and feel” of the CPT meetings vary considerably from school to school and district to district. Some of them meet daily ; some convene once per week (though not less frequently than that). Some CPTs include grade-level faculty ; others are clustered around subjects (math, ELA, etc.). While some CPTs meet for well over an hour, others meet for only 30 minutes or so, though these shorter sessions tend to be in schools where teachers get together more often than once per week. Meetings typically involve not more than six teachers, and often have just three or four.

Regardless of the mechanics, successful CPT meetings share two common elements. First, CPT meeting times are sacrosanct. These set-aside times for groups of teachers to meet

are written into every teacher’s schedule and attendance is mandatory. Except for extreme circumstances, the administration will not schedule anything over these meetings. Their second shared characteristic — as if to reinforce the first — is that each CPT must have an approved agenda and teachers must submit notes from every session to the principal. The agenda of each of these teacher discussions typically revolves around developing a list

of teaching objectives to implement over the coming week. Then, at each successive session, teachers reflect on how well they achieved the objectives from the session before.

The facilitation and note taking normally rotates among the group, but the diligence in maintaining focus on translating discussion to action in classrooms — and in providing evidence that it has — remains constant.

Using Data to Understand Students’ Needs Each of the districts is very clear : The key to improving teaching practice rests first on determining how much and how well students are learning. Without knowing precisely the strengths and weaknesses in the knowledgeand skill-base of each and every student, teachers are not able to target their teaching to student needs. Response to Intervention practitioners refer to the method as “progress monitoring” and suggest that absent good student data, the work of RTI cannot really take place. 17 Certainly, these districts are not pioneers in emphasizing “data-driven instruction” ; indeed, it has become accepted practice in American schools. 18 Yet, the educators in these expanded-time schools articulate how having a full rendering of the RTI process in place — together with regular CPTs, where much of the discussion revolves around what the data culled and analyzed from the periodic formative assessments show — means that data-driven instruction in these schools is more than just an ambition ; it is a fully-realized strategy.

These practitioners emphasize, too, that the real intent of this strategy is not just to determine what students might already have learned, but, more importantly, to help teachers tailor their instruction over the coming days and weeks to fill in any remaining gaps in students’ understanding. If a teacher notices, for example, that a subset of students does not seem to grasp a particular concept, then that teacher can be sure to spend extra time helping those students.

Further, if the whole class (or a substantial portion of the students) appears to be unable to demonstrate proficiency in a specific skill, the teacher can re-configure her lesson plans to address the deficit(s). As a concrete manifestation of how much teachers rely on data to shape their instruction, every teacher maintains a “databook” for each class. These compendia of data contain the assessment results and a host of other measures on each student, organized in a way to chart each individual’s progress. Teachers are observed consulting these databooks often.

As noted, another use for formative assessment data is to assist administrators and faculty with the formation of the academic support groups.

The precision of a standardized assessment

enables educators to know, with a fair degree of accuracy, what a particular student’s learning needs are. When the data arrive from the district office, faculty will quickly review the results and begin to arrange (or rearrange) academic support groups.

Formative assessment results are not the sole determinants of placement, but they serve as the starting point for deciding whether any given student is appropriately placed in a group of students with similar skill and comprehension levels.

School staff suggest that relentless adherence to data-driven instruction also yields effects on school culture. Because all discussions about student progress (both on individual and group levels) begin with an examination of data, both teachers and students become familiar with the idea of student growth as the organizing principal of the school experience. In almost every school visited, teachers have posted their students’ formative assessment data outside or inside their classrooms. (The scores are posted without names, though students tend to know their own performance and can see where they place relative to peers.) The purpose is not to call out individual classes or students, but to convey to students and teachers alike that everyone in the school is positively focused on demonstrating academic progress. This shared concentration on what specifically constitutes stronger and weaker performance then acts, in turn, to set very clear expectations for learning.

Some schools and some teachers have adapted to this intense focus on generating and applying data better than others. Principals describe the iterative process of helping individual teachers to derive meaning from numbers on a page and also encouraging entire faculties to translate data into changed pedagogy. Most principals admit that, on this measure, their work is far from complete. Yet, there are also instances where the use of data has not only taken root ; it has flourished. In a middle school in Buffalo, for example, one set of math teachers developed their own series of assessments, which were aligned carefully to the curriculum (and, in turn, to state standards).

The principal took such pride in what his

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faculty had created on their own that he arranged for them to present their product and methods at a professional development

session of teachers and administrators from other SSID schools, and now these assessments have been adopted by others.

Coaching to Improve Performance The formation of PLCs entails a shift of professional development to an on-site, embedded system, where teachers learn together in teams and their learning revolves tightly around their own practice. At the center of this system stands the academic (or instructional) coach. The coach (in partnership with the principal) is primarily responsible for training the faculty how to teach more effectively or, at the very least, how to better understand what constitutes their students’ learning strengths and weaknesses.

Coaches have two primary tasks. First, the coach acts as the chief facilitator of CPT sessions. When these meetings take place, it is the coach who sets the agenda, with such items as reviewing the latest round of formative assessments to understand together where students may need extra help or how to best address certain components of the curriculum. As teachers become more adept and effective during their CPT sessions, the coach can often take a less assertive role and allow the teachers to develop the agenda and facilitate the meeting on their own. The coach continues to attend meetings in this reduced role, while s/he continues to serve as the resident expert in their particular content area and to help ensure that CPT discussions are high-quality.

The second aspect of the coach’s charge is to support teachers who are translating the lessons learned in group discussions into their improved practice. Individual coaching sessions are the primary means through which this translation occurs. Coaches will spend many hours each week sitting in on various teachers’ classrooms in order to check

on a range of matters — from lesson pacing to responsiveness to student questions to content delivery. After the observations, coaches will then meet individually with the teacher to discuss what was observed, suggest areas for improvement, and answer any questions. (These meetings will often take place during a teacher’s planning period.) In this context, the coach will, ideally, serve as a “critical friend,” giving honest and substantive reaction, presented in language that expresses an eagerness to support and encourage the teacher’s growth as an educator. The observations are not, in other words, part of an evaluation process, but an interactive form of professional development.

While the coach is a key player in the effort to prompt teachers to examine their practice and improve upon it, the responsibility for developing teachers and improving overall teaching quality in the school ultimately falls upon the principal, who is expected to be the instructional leader of the school. Many principals, in fact, explain that they themselves spend numerous hours each week working with individual teachers, or groups of teachers, in a role akin to the academic coach. Along with attending CPT sessions, the principal will conduct his or her own observations of teachers. Principals will then meet individually with observed teachers so they can reflect together how these teachers might improve their pedagogical methods. District officials admit that not all principals effectively assume this role of instructional leader. In these cases, the responsibility then falls on district leaders to train the principal to be a better coach to his or her teachers.

The Effects of Building a Professional Learning Community Even as the educators in these schools have worked to develop PLCs in order to strengthen the overall instructional quality and build a culture of high expectations, the elements and underlying principals of PLCs actually run counter to the way teaching has been practiced in the United States for decades.

Teaching has often been referred to as an “eggcrate” profession, meaning that teachers work essentially in silos as independent agents, having little contact with peers and even less feedback on their teaching from other adults in the building. 19 A recent national survey of teachers, for example, found that, on average,

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they spend 93 percent of their time working in isolation. 20 Installing elements like regular CPTs and coaches often means, then, that educators in these schools must shed traditional approaches to teaching and open themselves up to more collaborative and flexible approaches.

As a result, the schools under review have experienced not only shifts in practices, but also significant changes in their faculties’ underlying attitudes and beliefs. These shifts take place in three ways. The first dynamic relates to the effect of introducing the concept

(and reality) of a system of professional critique and allowing oneself to be both giver and receiver of peer feedback. With the institution of a periodic data reporting system that demonstrates fully to one’s colleagues the performance of every student in each teacher’s classroom, together with the regular intervention of academic coaches and the principal in the classroom, teachers are no longer isolated. On the contrary, as individuals and as professionals, teachers are now on “public display.” Veteran teachers in these three districts note that this exposure can come as somewhat of a shock. Suddenly, their classroom is no longer their space alone and their teaching is opened up to judgments from co-workers and superiors alike. And, yet, as coaching sessions become more commonplace and discussions within CPT sessions become more fluid and candid, the sense of vulnerability that these situations might initially present begins to fade, and the trust between teacher and coaches (including the principal) grows. In turn, coaches and principals describe how gradually those teachers who may have once found this approach jarring come to see it as a natural (and welcome) part of teaching.

The second outcome flows directly from the first. Within the context of mutual trust that emerges from all teachers being in the same situation (i.e., being equally exposed to judgment and critique) comes the realization that the whole faculty is responsible for the school’s success. In other words, all educators on the staff share responsibility for all students, not just the ones sitting before them in their own classrooms. As noted earlier in the section on academic support classes, this shared responsibility stems in part from the whole-faculty involvement in the RTI process.

Even more, the cultivation of a common agenda springs from the continuous conversations that take place among teachers in their regular PLCs, where they each seek to help each other to become more effective educators. One district administrator in Volusia refers to the repeated instances of such dialogue as a sign of “mission shift [because] teachers have moved from being independent agents to members of a team.”

Finally, the larger context in which the PLCs in these schools have taken shape also proves highly relevant. All the subject schools have been identified as chronically

underperforming. For teachers who work in these schools, it may be tempting to assume that, given the steep socioeconomic and family challenges their students often face and the limits of what teachers themselves can actually do to influence individual student motivation, their school will remain indefinitely in a state of underperformance.

Yet the many teachers interviewed for this study categorically reject this view. Instead they believe strongly that change is possible.

These educators have come to understand that their “chronically underperforming” school can progress appreciably, specifically because they are acknowledging that they themselves can become better teachers.

Psychologically, moving on from the stigma of working in a school labeled as chronically underperforming — and several teachers admit that there is a stigma attached — can be a challenge. In this context, the mutual trust developed through the CPT and coaching sessions leads school faculty to a sense of shared responsibility, which, in turn, appears to fuel the conviction that positive change can happen.

As might be anticipated, both teachers and lead administrators claim that not all educators in these expanded-time schools have been able to accept this paradigm shift \in teaching. The transformed practice of opening themselves up to the judgment of peers ; operating as a member of a team ; or even believing that they can modify their teaching is, for any number of reasons, too difficult for some teachers to undertake.

Consequently, a considerable number of teachers have left these schools. (Pittsburgh, in particular, has seen staff turnover of up to 35 percent in some schools.) The mechanism by which they leave varies according to the district standards and the degree of authority principals are given in hiring and moving teachers out. But both principals and teachers clearly believe that the school will improve significantly only if all teachers and administrators work together to focus on improving instruction. Those who, either actively or passively, decline to participate in endeavors aimed at instructional improvement generally do not feel comfortable in a school’s changed social environment.

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IV . The District’s Role in Managing School Reform

A

ll three district offices play a pivotal role in facilitating the complex constellation of practices that are designed to bring about higher student performance in the target schools. Of course, the district identifies the resources to compensate teachers (and/ or paraprofessionals) for the expanded time and negotiates the employee agreement that supports it. Yet beyond funding the initiatives, the districts also puts in place policies and personnel to help ensure that every school is utilizing the additional time effectively and that their investment will pay off. As part of shaping school improvement, administrators describe trying to strike a balance between giving schools autonomy to innovate and develop, on the one hand, and holding them accountable for results, on the other. When it comes to accountability, districts seek to promote (and, to some extent, require) certain practices, because without this push leaders believe that schools may become caught in the status quo, rather than being proactive in employing new, effective practices. On the autonomy side of the equation, leaders in all three districts recognize that school reform is, at its core, a human endeavor. For all the talk of building systems and establishing procedures, it is ultimately principals, teachers, and students who must work together to improve.

District leaders appear to recognize that they

must do what they can from the central office to support this organic development process.

Therefore, district administrators strive to maintain this accountability-autonomy balance in four key areas : (a) curriculum and instruction, (b) professional development and coaching, (c) generation and use of data on student performance, and (d) oversight of program implementation. (Administrators signal that these four management matters would be in place with or without more time, and yet, having the additional minutes during the day does allow for greater flexibility of implementation in the first three areas.) Again, as might be expected, a fair degree of variation exists among the districts in each of these areas, but, in all cases, the specific policies that set the accountability-autonomy dynamic are planted firmly in a foundation of collaboration. Indeed, district staff and school staff express their desire to partner in the effort to drive change. As one Buffalo district administrator describes her office’s relationship with its schools, capturing an attitude that seems remarkably consistent across the districts, “If the district is going to hold schools in the SSID accountable for results, the district must be held accountable by the schools for assisting and supporting their work to improve teaching and learning.”

Setting Curriculum and Instructional Methods The establishing of curriculum at the district level is fairly standard practice in America, and these districts are no different. Each has developed a grade- and subject-level curriculum, including the use of certain text books and other published resources, as well as internally-developed lesson plans, courses, and classes. These curricula are in place not only in the turnaround schools, but also in all schools throughout the district. In Buffalo, for example, the district has adopted three literacy curricula, designed for different levels of students. Meanwhile, in Pittsburgh, schools use a combination of Everyday Math and Math Exploration in the mathematics classes and also some pieces of the America’s Choice curriculum,

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including Writer’s Workshop. And in Volusia, in addition to some published programs, the district has created several of its own curricula in literacy, math, and science. Along with producing curricular resources, each of the three districts, like many across the country, has established its own grade- and subject-specific pacing guides — a week-by-week (and, in some cases, day-by-day) schedule for what teachers should be teaching when.

Where these districts move beyond their traditional role is in professing a set of pedagogical methods that teachers should implement in order to increase the efficacy of their teaching. For instance, Buffalo has

instituted the “Direct Instruction” model of teaching, whereby teachers first explain what the students are to do, then the students and teacher complete a problem or task together, and, as a culminating step, the students are left to complete a task on their own. Pittsburgh’s Accelerated Learning Academies have implemented instructional rubrics, as prescribed by the America’s Choice model, such as focusing on peer feedback and posting student work that includes these comments. Volusia has purchased the “Thinking Maps” program and institutes it throughout the district, not just in Plus One schools.

Throughout the three districts, these innovative practices are evident in nearly every classroom, with remarkable consistency in “look and feel” from, say, a fifth-grade classroom in one school to a fifth-grade class in another. The purpose of this standardization, say administrators, is not to delegitimize individual teacher perspective, or to suggest there is only one way of teaching, but rather to ensure that a quality education is provided to all students. Without such coherence across schools, it would be much more difficult for a district to track how a particular school or classroom was upholding the standards. Further, the district — via the instructional coaches — will delineate particular practices (e.g., peer editing, “do nows,” or t-charts) that are deemed effective

practices in helping students to organize their thinking and to ensure overall efficient use of class time.

Attitudinally, teachers in all three districts express a willingness to accept the centralization of education through pacing guides and the expectation of particular teaching techniques. When asked, teachers claim a certain level of comfort in knowing what they are supposed to be doing every day, rather than having the burden placed on them to figure out what to teach. For example, in the ALAs, it might be conceivable that the America’s Choice methods could generate resentment among teachers that an external model is being imposed upon them. Instead, school leaders and teachers consistently describe the America’s Choice structure as “just best practices,” suggesting that they do not feel constrained by the adherence to a fixed model, but rather supported by a research-based approach to turning around underperforming schools. In Volusia and Buffalo, too, teachers and principals repeatedly express their support for their district’s efforts to better align and coordinate instructional practices and delivery of content. They note, too, that having additional class time allows them more opportunity to implement the expected instructional methods.

Improving Teaching and Developing Teachers All three districts have adopted the strategic approach to professional development that emphasizes change in instructional practices, and also, as detailed in the previous section, situates the process of effectuating that change within the school itself. Transitioning the district to a professional development approach that centers on a model of reviewing one’s own teaching takes vision, along with the human resources to make such a transition possible. All three districts have installed two full-time coaches — one literacy and one math — in each of the target schools. Buffalo also supports, in many of its schools, a technology coach, and some Volusia Plus One schools have an intervention coach to focus on the academic support groups. Coaches are placed at Volusia’s non-target schools as well, but these coaches may not be full-time and instead travel to two or more schools every week.

None of the districts, however, considers the significant investment of human resources that is reflected in having at least two coaches in every school to be sufficient. Each district also seeks ways to ensure that the coaches themselves are effective and that the coaching regimen proceeds as intended. The primary means to support coaches involves the additional investment in two coach supervisors (one literacy, one math) who manage and train the school-level coaches. These supervisors serve

as the experts available to the school-level coaches (and to the teachers at each school) ; the supervisors also coordinate the messaging and methods the coaches use. In Volusia, for example, coaches have been trained on how to take notes during classroom observations and how to construct effective conversations with the teacher in reviewing what was observed.

Although in-school coaching and collaborative planning time stand as the core learning activity for teachers, all three districts also require teachers to participate in off-site (i.e., non-embedded) professional development.

Each district has several dedicated days during the summer when teachers attend districtrun (or district-managed) classes — including how-to sessions on reviewing new curricula ; integrating technology, like smart boards, in the classroom ; and better managing and analyzing student data. Because the content of these sessions is carefully aligned to the in-school training teachers receive, the summer professional development classes (there are also learning opportunities throughout the academic year) reinforce, rather than divert, teacher skills and knowledge. In each district, teachers appear pleased with these out-ofschool classes and believe that they are well-run and support their teaching.

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Generating and Using Data While the schools are responsible for applying assessment data to target instruction, it is each district that sets the frame and priority for data-driven instruction. This responsibility entails two basic functions. First, as they design curriculum maps, district administrators in the teaching and learning office must be sure that what is being taught aligns tightly to the formative assessments the district has selected or created on their own. As a corollary, the assessments must align to the expected curriculum. Having uniform assessments across the district effectively secures the practice within each school — not only the target schools, but every school in the district — of making formative assessments part and parcel of the educational program.

The second task entails the mechanics of test taking and reporting results. With an

assessment organized by the district, the central office can quickly process the tests and return results back to the individual schools. By receiving the data promptly (usually no more than a week of return time), school faculty and administration can begin understanding and applying the results of the assessments in a timely fashion. As noted above, the district also requires teachers to maintain and use databooks so that the data come to be organically connected to teaching. Observationally, teachers and coaches are often seen poring over the databooks (both in class and during CPTs) for information. In all three districts, the frequent conversations, about how teachers might address the gap between what students know and what they should know begin with an examination of the data, as generated through the formative assessments.

Overseeing Implementation Another shared structural element among the three districts is having a single administrator who oversees the entire set of expanded-time schools. This individual, who is positioned at the deputy superintendent level or other administrative post with similar status, is responsible for the whole support system for these schools and also acts to cohere and share learning across the target schools. In each district, this supervisor visits the target schools on a regular basis. Visits consist mostly of informal conversations with teachers and administrators, or observing classes, or attending CPT meetings. Because this administrator is a frequent visitor to the schools and the purpose of the visits is to be supportive, rather than critical, school-based educators point to this encouragement as a poignant demonstration of the district’s professed desire to partner with the schools.

With respect to the official district oversight structure, the least rigid of the three is Volusia, where visits by district administrators do not take place on a regular schedule or with a strict review protocol in place. Still, both school and district administrators suggest that this lack of formality does not mean lax supervision. Because district-level academic coaches visit the Plus One schools frequently, the district administrators most responsible for the sound implementation of the Plus One model do have a firm grasp on what is taking place in each school.

Buffalo falls next on the oversight continuum.

Twice per year, district administrators conduct prescribed “walk-throughs” of the SSID schools.

Unlike the informal visits, these walk-throughs

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have a fixed protocol. District officials will sit in on classrooms and teacher collaborative planning time, review policies and procedures and, generally, examine the school for its promotion of high expectations. Then the administrators will meet with the school principal (and other members of the instructional leadership team) to review findings and consider steps toward improvement.

Pittsburgh, too, conducts a semi-annual quality review of the eight ALAs. These fullday explorations involve a number of district staff — including the deputy superintendent and instructional coaches — and educational consultants from America’s Choice, who come to the school to provide an honest and thorough assessment of how well the school is implementing the delineated educational practices. The quality review visit consists, first, of the inspectors touring many classrooms in small groups to assess how individual teachers have assembled their book of student data and samples of work. After this sweep through the building, the group convenes with the principal, content coaches, and other members of the school’s instructional leadership team to discuss, point-by-point, to what degree the school has met expectations on implementing that particular element of the America’s Choice rubric. These conversations between school and district personnel can be extraordinarily candid, with topics ranging from the performance of individual teachers to the management of racial tensions.

V. Lessons Learned

T

hese districts and schools have implemented a number of far-reaching changes : installing a system of datadriven instruction, taking overt steps to form professional learning communities, and providing more time for teaching and learning. Do these significant changes make a difference in student academic outcomes?

Data are clearly mixed. Some schools and grades have shown remarkable growth ; others have shown little increase in rates of proficiency. Most schools in Buffalo and in Florida are no longer on academic watch lists developed by the state, and a few Pittsburgh schools have made Adequate Yearly Progress as well, but progress has been slow and variable. (Outcomes on state assessments for each school and grade in the three district initiatives from 2007 – 2010 are included in Appendix C.) Undoubtedly, myriad reasons account for the unevenness that permeates all levels of the system — district, school, and classroom. Given the scope and methodology of this particular study, it is not possible to draw explicit correlations between student academic growth and various implementation factors. Instead, the following section focuses only on the perceptions of superintendents and other leaders about why success might take hold in some of their schools and grades and not in others.

Through interviews with the leadership in each of the three districts on the matter of variability of student outcomes both within and among schools, several common themes emerged. While none of these insights is particularly new in the field of education reform, considering that the leaders’ analyses take place in the larger context of a comprehensive school transformation agenda, they do hold certain weight. Before reviewing these district leaders’ takes on their own schools, Michael Fullan, a noted expert in school transformation, offers the following piece of wisdom : The search for effective strategies for bringing about school improvements is a tantalizing affair. On the one hand, research in a number of areas on school effectiveness, classroom effectiveness, staff development,

leadership, and implementation is increasingly convergent and detailed in identifying factors related to improvement, and the findings make common sense. On the other hand, we know that deliberately attempting change is a complex, dilemmaridden, technical, sociopolitical process.

Looked at one day, in one setting, successful educational change seems so sensible and straightforward ; on another day, in another situation, improvement cannot be attained with the most sophisticated efforts. Change is at once simple and complex, and therein lies its fascination. 21 Certainly, these districts have proceeded with their school improvement efforts in accordance with what are now common-sense notions in the educational community about what it takes to provide excellent education, particularly for high-poverty students. As the Deputy Superintendent from Volusia sums it up, “More time always works when there are quality adults with the best pedagogy in place.” Yet, optimizing these three elements — time, content, and teaching — is, as Fullan makes clear about change in schools generally, a thorny process.

The time element alone — seemingly the most straightforward of the components — is actually quite complicated. District leadership in all three sites have suggested that the quantity of extra daily minutes (and additional days to the year, in Pittsburgh’s case) are probably not enough to make as much of a difference in changing the trajectory of student achievement as is necessary for such an at-risk population.

These district leaders have settled on the additional hour (roughly) as a compromise position, given the limitations of resources and the union agreements by which they are bound. Still, these educational leaders argue that with the severe deficits in academic ability that so many of their students bring, the schools would probably benefit from having even more learning time than they already provide.

As for getting “quality adults with the best pedagogy,” the district leaders contend that this is the whole point of their attempts

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to transform professional development into a system that would enable teachers to raise their level of effectiveness. In fact, these superintendents emphasize, as their school leaders do, that having more time each week for teacher collaboration and coaching accelerates the process of enhancing teaching throughout the schools.

Still, according to the district leaders, there is no avoiding the reality that teacher effectiveness varies considerably between and within schools. These superintendents, like their counterparts around the country, are now grappling to design the best ways to develop the current corps of teachers, to recruit new talented individuals into teaching, and to ensure that the strongest teachers are serving the most disadvantaged students. Superintendents agree that if we are to raise student achievement appreciably in high-poverty schools, all three strategies, implemented well, are necessary.

Another matter of staff capacity relates to the academic coaches. Serving as a coach in an embedded professional development system requires a wide range of skills.

Coaches must have a deep understanding of educational content and the learning needs of both children and of adults, not to mention persistence and the ability to mix empathy with authority. Thus, the talent pool for academic coaches may be too shallow to ensure that every coach in every school is capable of performing their considerable tasks at an acceptably high level.

For these two reasons — inconsistency in teaching effectiveness and subpar coaching capacity — the ambitions of in-school professional development may fall short and, in the meantime, educational quality in classrooms may lag.

Finally, district leaders acknowledge that the most demanding job of all in the targeted schools is that of principal, and they suggest that the number of individuals who possess the requisite skills to lead a successful turnaround school is decidedly small. Two superintendents admit that, due to a limited talent pool, they have failed to find or place sufficient numbers of school leaders who have the vision and/or the human skills to advance an entire staff along a path of

16

continuous improvement. Superintendents note, too, that because turning around a school necessitates that a complex set of practices becomes established over time, stability at the principal position is key.

When principals leave their positions after only a year or two, as they have in a number of these schools, the integration of effective practices can suffer setbacks. As a result, the teaching and learning in these schools remain largely unchanged. Of course, the matter of principal capacity and turnover has major implications for the national school turnaround agenda.

Perhaps the most significant takeaway from interviews with the superintendents is their confidence that the practices and systems that they have put in place have brought about concrete, meaningful change in many of their schools. And, because they have seen real progress in a good number of places, they believe that, in the long run, what they are doing is the right way to bring about whole-school transformation in every school. Consequently, these superintendents do not plan to deviate from their core approach — an approach that draws upon the conventional wisdom about best practices — namely, prioritizing data-driven instruction and embedded professional development, and then aligning resources to support these practices. They also have insisted upon expanded time, both to afford students more opportunity to achieve proficiency and to activate and accelerate the two key educational strategies. Within their own districts, these superintendents have seen schools that have overcome challenges to raise achievement. The superintendents recognize ultimately that transformation among schools identified as chronically underperforming is an extremely difficult task. As the Pittsburgh superintendent puts it succinctly, “When it comes to educating high-poverty students, there is very little room for error.”

VI. The Future of School Improvement

W

hen the Obama Administration first re-vamped the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program in 2009 and articulated an aspiration to turn around the nation’s lowestperforming schools, educators and policymakers reacted with a mixture of excitement and caution. The excitement sprung from the possibility of improving so many struggling schools at once, while concerns arose for the very same reason. As Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute explains, “Turnarounds can be a valuable tool for improving underperforming schools. However, the hope that we can systematically turn around all troubled schools — or even a majority of them — is at odds with much of what we know from private-sector efforts.” 22 It is too early in the course of this large-scale effort to judge whether the nation will succeed in what Secretary Duncan himself called “the toughest assignment of all.” 23 Yet, for three interdependent factors, there are grounds to believe that the federal government, local districts and educators everywhere will make consequential progress in the journey.

The first cause for optimism stems from the sophistication of the knowledge-base detailing effective practices and, in turn, the many supports now available to help educators execute these proven practices. Consider the case of data-driven instruction and Response to Intervention, for example. Today, well-developed pedagogical methods for addressing individual student learning needs are available.

What’s more, there are also high-quality tools, like formative assessments and curricula revolving around these assessments, that can supply sound data for “data-driven instruction.” As Robert Balfanz, a school reform researcher at Johns Hopkins declares, “We have a knowledge base about what works and what doesn’t, and the conditions under which it works. We need to draw on that. The challenge is getting the right strategy in the right place, and getting the know-how to more people.” 24 And this is where the SIG program plays a role, for it explicitly aligns its funding to the implementation of these research-based practices. 25 So, the second positive element is that with quality implementation, the right strategies will be directed to those schools that need them most. In other words, the SIG program sets clear expectations for what school reform can and should be. Further, because there are hundreds of SIG grantee schools undertaking similar efforts to modify and hone their practices, this informal network can act as an expansive learning and support community. And

this network of practitioners will, in turn, be bolstered by many independent education organizations that can furnish expert technical assistance to educators and administrators in underperforming schools.

These include many relatively new organizations that have been established to strengthen the skill sets of teachers and principals.

The third reason why there should be optimism that the nationwide school transformation effort can succeed is because the SIG grants also support increased learning time, which, as the three districts in this study prove, can be a catalyst for these researchbased practices to take root. With additional time in class, teachers can more easily employ different pedagogical methods and better target instruction to every student’s needs. With expanded time, schools can organize systems to provide further intensive individual support for students, and perhaps realize more fully the goals and methods of RTI. And, finally, with more time, teachers have added opportunities to work in teams, sharing best practices and developing among themselves the aspiration and the methods for continuous and collaborative improvement.

Together, these practices will enable a greater number of individual students to achieve proficiency and the whole school to achieve a higher degree of efficacy.

In the end, the schools that are now undertaking whole-school improvement do so with the knowledge that success is possible. Indeed, because so many examples of high-performing expanded-time schools serving disadvantaged children currently exist, they have become impossible to ignore. These schools vary in size, location, and grades served. They feature a wide variety of educational programming. They hail not only from the more specialized field of charter schools, but are found also among traditional district schools.

Despite their differences, the one thing most of these schools have in common is that they have been able to harness the power of more time to promote an intense focus on meeting the academic needs of all students and a process to enable ever-stronger teaching and learning. Certainly in Volusia County, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh, many schools have brought about this transformation. Now, over one thousand SIG schools have the opportunity to harness this power to improve education, as well. As these schools each tread their own path toward becoming high-performing, they offer hope that, in the years ahead, millions more American schoolchildren will receive the excellent education they deserve.

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Endnotes National Education Commission on Time and Learning, Prisoners of Time (Washington, DC : U.S. Department of Education, 1994).

1

2

For research on the connection between time and the achievement gap see Karl Alexander, Doris Entwisle and Lynn Olson, ”Schools, Achievement, and Inequality : A Seasonal Perspective,” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 23 :2, 2001, pp. 171 – 91 ; and Dennis Downey, et al, “Are Schools the Great Equalizer? Cognitive Inequality During the Summer Months and the School Year,” American Sociological Review, 2004 69, 613 – 635.

3

For additional information on School Improvement Grant, see the USED Website at : http ://www2.ed.gov/programs/sif/ index.html. Also see, U.S. Department of Education, “Guidance on School Improvement Grants” (Washington, D.C. : Author, 29 June 2010), p. 16.

4

Caitlin Scott, School Improvement Grants Present Uncertainty and Opportunity (Washington, DC : Center on Education Policy, 2010).

5

6

7

In the case of Buffalo and Pittsburgh, this restructuring of schools was the operational theory from the outset. The districts added time to state-designated low-achieving schools (Buffalo) or reconstituted internally identified schools (Pittsburgh) in order to change the educational practices and, in no small part, to provoke a transformation of the culture at these schools. In Volusia, the adding of time started initially as a way to help classrooms of struggling students, but grew into a means to fundamentally strengthen educational methods for the whole school. Either way, however, the intent is the same.

The strongest evidence for the link between expanding time in schools and higher student outcomes comes from the field of charter schools. See Carolyn Hoxby, Sonali Murarka and Jenny Kang, How New York City’s Charter Schools Affect Achievement, August 2009 Report. Second report in series.

(Cambridge, Mass. : New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project, September 2009), p. V-5. Also, Susan Bowles Therriault, et al, Out of the Debate and into the Schools ; Comparing Practices and Strategies in Traditional, Pilot and Charter Schools in the City of Boston (Boston, MA : American Institutes for Research, 2010).

Studies examining the connection between time spent in class and the effect on outcomes supports this decision, as does research on the impact of more time on task

18

or “academic learning time” on individual learning. For example, Dennis Coates, “Education Production Functions Using Instructional Time as an Input,” Education Economics, 11 :3 (Dec 2003), pp. 273 – 292 and Charles Fisher and David Berliner, Teaching and Learning in the Elementary School : A Summary of the Beginning Teacher Evaluation Study (San Francisco, CA : Far West Lab for Educational Research and Development, 1978).

8

A 2008 study found that elementary students spend, on average, 141 more minutes per week in English classes and 89 more minutes per week in math than in the days before the No Child Left Behind mandates. Yet, because time is a finite resource and more restricted within traditional-schedule schools, other classes have lost time, including science and social studies (now meeting about 75 fewer minutes per week), followed by art (57 minutes per week) and physical education (40 minutes) (See Jennifer McMurre, Instructional Time in Elementary schools : A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects (Washington, DC : Center on Education Policy, 2008).)

9

In the lower grades, schools throughout the district must schedule 90 minutes each day (450 minutes each per week) for both math and reading, have at least 120 minutes per week for science classes and another 90 minutes per week for social studies. Middle grades are also required to have 90 minutes per day for math and reading. Additionally, middle grade students have 45 minutes of science and social studies daily. The schedule is rounded out by a 45-minute period of specials (library, physical education, music, art and health).

10

J.J. Hoover, et al, National implementation of Response to Intervention : Research summary (Alexandria, VA : National Association of State Directors of Special Education, 2008).

11

For a helpful review of the RTI process, see Douglas Fuchs and Lynn Fuchs, “Introduction to Response to Intervention : What, Why, and How Valid Is It?” Reading Research Quarterly, 2006. 41(1), 93 – 99.

12

When ALAs first began, the district mandated a year of 190 days, with eight days at the start of the year and two at the end. After the third year of implementation, the district cancelled the two day extension beyond the regular district calendar.

13

Shirely Hord, Professional Learning Communities : What Are They and Why Are They Important? (Austin, TX : Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), 1997). Also see, Richard DuFour, “What is a Professional Learning Community?

Educational Leadership, 2004, 61(8), 6 – 11.

14

15

16

Fred M. Newmann and Gary G. Wehlage, Successful School Restructuring : A Report to the Public and Educators (Washington, DC : American Federation of Teachers, 1995). Also, William M. Saunders, Claude N. Goldenberg and Ronald Gallimore , “Increasing Achievement by Focusing Grade-Level Teams on Improving Classroom Learning : A Prospective, Quasi-Experimental Study of Title I Schools,” American Educational Research Journal Vol. 46, No. 4 (Dec., 2009), pp. 1006 – 1033.

Karen Seashore Louis, et al, “Professional Community in Restructuring Schools” American Education Research Journal, 33 (1996), pp. 757 – 798.

Linda Darling Hammond, et al, Professional Learning in the Learning Profession : A Status Report on Teacher Development in the United States and Abroad, (Dallas, TX : National Staff Development Council, 2009), p. 7.

17

Fuchs and Fuchs.

18

Quint, J. C., Sepanik, S., & Smith, J.K., Using Student Data to Improve Teaching and Learning : Findings from an Evaluation of the Formative Assessments of Students

Thinking in Reading (FAST-R) Program in Boston Elementary Schools (New York : MDRC, 2008).

19

See, for example, A.G. Rud, “Breaking the Egg Crate,” Education Theory, 1993 43(1), 71 – 83.

20

Dana Markow and Andrea Pieters, The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher : Collaborating for Student Success (New York : Metropolitan, 2009).

21

Michael Fullan, “Change Processes and Strategies at the Local Level,” The Elementary School Journal, 1985 85(3), 390 – 421.

22

Quoted in Catherine Gewertz, “Duncan’s Call for School Turnarounds Sparks Debate,” Education Week, 21 July 2009.

23

Arne Duncan, Speech to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, Washington, D.C., 22 June 2009.

24

Gewertz, “Duncan’s Call for School Turnarounds.”

25

For a full description of the School Improvement Grant program that details allowable uses of funds and their relation to research-based methods : http ://www2.ed.gov/ programs/sif/sigguidance05242010.pdf

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Appendix A

A Brief Summary of the Three District Initiatives

Pittsburgh, PA : Accelerated Learning Academies (ALA) • Implemented in Fall 2006 as part of a comprehensive district reorganization (including closing 22 schools) by Superintendent Mark Roosevelt ; eight existing schools reconstituted as ALAs with more time, new principals and faculty and other supports ; overseen by single deputy superintendent • ALAs include : 2 elementary schools, 1 middle school and 5 K – 8 schools ; ALAs serve approximately 3,300 students (68% AfricanAmerican, 22% White, 10% Hispanic ; 81% low-income) • Funded through savings generated from school closings ; $19 million total for ALAs for school year 2009 – 10, about $1.6 million of which is considered costs to support expanded time (and other ALA-specific features) • The additional funding for ALA schools supports :

stipends for additional 10 days ($3,500) ; stipends equivalent to a seven percent (7%) pay increase for roughly 15 percent more time (b) contract with America’s Choice to provide curricular materials, “best practices” guidelines and technical support (c) parental outreach coordinator at each school (d) math and literacy academic coaches at each school • School day for all students expanded by 45 minutes to seven hours daily ; school year is 188 days ; additional 45 minutes applied towards daily “writer’s workshop” ; schools also dedicate 30 – 45 minutes/day for academic support ; additional eight days at start of school year used to “front load” curriculum

(a) teacher stipends to work an eight-hour day for 188 days ($2,300) and additional

Volusia County, FL : Plus One • Program providing extra hour of instruction daily has expanded gradually since 2003 from five classrooms at a single school to nine whole schools by 2008 ; began as voluntary for teachers to participate and then became mandatory for whole faculty (by 2007) ; schools participate in Plus One only if minimum of 80 percent of teachers vote to participate ; overseen by Title I administrator and deputy superintendent • Plus One schools include 9 elementary schools and serve approximately 4,800 students (40% African-American, 27% White, 23% Hispanic ; 82% low-income) • Funded through Title I allocations ; total costs for the 2009 – 10 school year approximately $3.3 million (about 20% of overall district Title I budget) ; Plus One schools funded at mean rate of $370,000 more per year than non-Plus One school

20

• The additional funding supports : (a) teacher salary increases by individual teachers’ contracted hourly rate, average of $7,500 per, for approximately 16 percent more time (429 total teachers) (b) additional pay for aides (paraprofessionals), average of $2,200 per (48 total aides) (c) full-time academic coaches (math and literacy) at each school • School day for all students expanded by one hour to seven hours daily ; additional time use varies by grade and school, but must be dedicated toward core subject instruction

Buffalo, NY : Superintendent’s School Improvement District (SSID) • Formed in Fall 2006 by Superintendent James Williams by converting group of 16 chronically underperforming schools (Schools Under Registration Review) to a districtwithin-a-district ; overseen by community superintendent • SSID includes : 3 high schools, 1 K – 4, 2 middle schools and 10 K – 8 schools ; they serve approximately 7,500 students (58% AfricanAmerican, 22% Hispanic, 18% White ; 90% low-income) • Funded through Contract for Excellence (payment from New York State to highpoverty districts, settled through school financing case) ; payment = $60 MM over four years (i.e., $15 MM per year) • The funding for SSID schools is directed for : (a) reducing class size by hiring more core academic teachers ; (b) hiring teachers’ aides and assistants to facilitate the expansion of the schedule and to place additional adults in classrooms ;

(d) hiring full-time math, literacy and technology coaches for each school to coordinate and implement in-school professional development ; (e) purchasing curricula in literacy and math, as well as the engagement of external consultants to assist teachers with the implementation of the specific curricula ; and (f) five full days of professional development classes at the end of the summer for all SSID teachers • School day for all students expanded by one hour to seven hours daily ; teachers work same number of hours as before SSID, but on two schedules (8 :00 – 2 :00 and 9 :00 – 3 :00), which are staggered to provide coverage ; additional staffing during first and last hour of day provided by paraprofessionals and aides • Additional time typically applied towards more time in ELA and math classes ; daily academic support classes for all students

(c) the addition of 20 days during the summer for all students (on a voluntary basis for proficient students, mandatory for non-proficient students) ;

21

Appendix B

School Demographics

2009 – 1 0 School Year School

# Studs.

Grades Served

% White

% Af-Am.

% Hispanic

% Asian

% L.I.

% ELL

VOLUSIA Blue Lake

618

K – 5

37.2

24.8

30.4

1.8

75.7

23.8

Edith Starke

429

K – 5

25.9

32.9

33.1

1.9

86.0

27.7

Holly Hill

582

K – 5

50.5

30.1

11.2

1.0

83.3

7.4

Louis McInnis

456

K – 5

33.8

3.1

61.0

0.7

74.6

50.9

Palm Terrace

798

K – 5

18.8

65.9

5.0

1.3

90.0

2.1

Pierson

576

K – 5

23.8

5.0

69.4

0.0

83.3

59.7

Turie Small

497

K – 5

13.3

78.3

3.8

0.4

89.5

2.2

Champion

458

K – 5

54.4

36.2

3.9

1.1

73.6

1.5

433

K – 5

12.9

75.8

3.9

0.0

87.5

1.2

Arlington 2

426

K – 8

30

59

6

0

88.4

n/a

Colfax

671

K – 8

50

31

5

9

42.1

n/a

Fort Pitt

219

K – 5

3

95

0

0

97.3

n/a

King

514

K – 8

13

80

1

1

92.6

n/a

Murray

308

K – 8

22

70

1

1

87.5

n/a

Northview

312

K – 5

5

89

0

1

96.2

n/a

Rooney

160

6 – 8

13

83

0

0

90.9

n/a

Weil

267

K – 8

1

99

0

0

91.2

n/a

Westside PITTSBURGH

1

BUFFALO ES of Technology

570

K – 8

17

69

10

6

96

13

Pantoja Comm.

455

K – 8

8

34

49

8

96

30

Native Amer. 3

359

K – 8

11

36

19

8

95

21

H. Tubman Acad.

503

K – 8

5

87

2

4

95

0

PS 37 Futures

540

K – 8

9

84

4

0

94

0

Comm. Sch. #53

404

K – 8

1

94

4

0

90

0

Early Childhood Ctr.

335

K – 4

5

91

4

0

98

0

Hamlin Park

369

K – 8

4

92

4

0

99

0

Badillo Comm.

380

K – 8

2

7

89

1

82

67

W. Hertel

397

K – 8

19

53

18

5

95

10

22

# Studs.

Grades Served

% White

% Af-Am.

% Hispanic

% Asian

% L.I.

% ELL

Grabiarz

550

5 – 8

23

58

15

1

97

1

School

1 2 3

Mayor Sedita

665

K – 8

6

22

68

2

97

44

H. Austin

190

5 – 8

4

94

2

0

99

0

G. Cleveland

492

9 – 12

10

51

29

9

75

43

South Park

777

9 – 12

60

26

11

1

66

3

Burgard Voke

551

9 – 12

12

76

10

1

80

3

Pittsburgh data on LEP students are not available.

The Arlington school also lists its multiracial population at 30%.

The Native American Magnet also lists its American Indian population at 27%.

23

Appendix C

Table 1 Student Outcomes for Volusia’s Plus One Elementary Schools Percent of Students Scoring Proficient on FCAT (Reading, Math, Writing and Science), 2007 – 2 010

By School and Grade Note : Subjects-Grades with gains of at least 10 points, 2007 – 2010, are indicated in bold. Percentages that meet or exceed the state are in blue. State scores appear following Plus One schools.

Reading SCHOOL/ GRADE

2007

2008

2009

Mathematics

Writing

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

Science

2007

2008

2009

2010

57

68

84

87

2007

2008

2009

2010

32

30

54

43

26

45

35

46

24

24

30

43

27

23

39

32

36

29

38

39

20

20

29

34

BLUE LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

60

71

61

70

75

82

76

85

4

59

71

65

67

69

73

73

69

5

65

58

72

66

53

64

70

62

CHAMPION ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

65

63

73

60

67

74

67

68

4

57

61

55

57

57

52

80

57

5

73

64

64

62

44

47

48

47

70

75

86

96

EDITH I. STARKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

54

53

64

56

54

53

76

45

4

52

46

54

66

50

52

54

69

5

57

54

55

52

33

28

53

45

81

78

76

93

HOLLY HILL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

61

59

69

58

57

50

66

56

4

49

59

67

60

51

50

67

63

5

61

56

58

51

43

47

49

41

68

61

73

93

LOUISE S. MCINNIS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

57

61

53

47

57

57

56

47

4

58

58

50

77

52

58

54

60

5

67

55

61

57

58

49

41

48

46

63

86

86

PALM TERRACE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

24

3

67

48

59

61

59

46

66

68

4

54

65

66

64

32

55

53

62

5

60

48

51

48

37

33

38

43

68

73

84

89

Reading SCHOOL/ GRADE

2007

2008

2009

Mathematics

Writing

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

Science

2007

2008

2009

2010

66

65

74

86

2007

2008

2009

2010

40

36

43

55

23

36

38

14

5

22

30

34

PIERSON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

63

73

54

71

52

79

58

79

4

48

77

72

49

51

67

80

53

5

61

52

64

68

49

35

55

68

TURIE T. SMALL ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

48

62

59

55

52

57

57

52

4

54

66

55

60

59

64

61

56

5

68

50

72

46

66

48

52

32

60

65

68

64

81

73

80

94

WESTSIDE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 3

62

63

68

55

4

53

48

67

59

61

57

65

63

5

38

58

51

55

30

48

29

46

Reading

76

71

Mathematics

90

86

Writing

State

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

3

69

72

71

72

74

76

78

78

4

68

70

74

72

69

71

75

74

5

72

67

71

69

59

61

62

63

Science

2007

2008

2009

2010

78

77

85

94

2007

2008

2009

2010

42

43

46

49

Table 2 Student Outcomes for Pittsburgh’s Accelerated Learning Academies Percent of Students Scoring Proficient on PSSA (Reading, Math, Writing and Science), 2007 – 2 010

By School and Grade Note : Subjects-Grades with gains of at least 10 points, 2007 – 2010, are indicated in bold. Science testing did not begin until 2008.

Percentages that meet or exceed the state are in blue. State scores appear following ALA schools.

Reading SCHOOL/ GRADE

Mathematics

Writing

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

3

58

68

39

42

71

83

70

86

4

51

38

47

47

72

61

87

78

5

47

41

35

36

73

36

48

81

6

39

55

20

40

58

73

51

53

7

57

65

60

45

49

66

75

27

8

55

71

71

66

50

56

65

62

ALL GR

41

57

45

46

59

62

67

65

2007

2008

2009

Science 2010

2008

2009

2010

41

53

37

24

38

29

ARLINGTON

23

11

30

17

74

81

74

56

25

Reading SCHOOL/ GRADE

Mathematics

Writing

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

3

66

71

79

85

68

74

78

93

4

67

73

75

70

75

81

85

79

5

55

47

72

65

75

59

75

83

6

56

55

58

66

62

73

58

82

7

65

53

61

69

62

50

63

63

2007

2008

2009

Science 2010

2008

2009

2010

84

87

79

38

28

51

55

0

0

46

30

26

15

21

15

35

32

43

3

3

6

37

63

32

11

4

5

COLFAX

8

55

70

69

71

55

64

48

60

ALL GR

61

62

70

71

67

68

69

78

3

38

40

45

35

64

64

68

58

4

26

38

31

33

61

67

72

69

5

28

18

36

33

64

47

62

61

ALL GR

31

32

38

33

63

59

67

63

3

36

50

39

36

33

48

42

43

4

30

26

25

20

26

41

25

44

5

9

28

22

20

19

25

23

6

6

34

33

33

28

50

39

39

43

7

29

46

34

39

27

59

42

46

38

32

59

48

43

47

51

53

FORT PITT

36

33

30

38

M L KING

8

51

56

56

61

33

40

50

42

ALL GR

30

39

35

35

30

40

37

39

3

24

24

39

29

34

44

56

41

4

20

12

32

40

26

51

54

63

5

28

8

26

28

53

31

43

40

6

50

36

10

31

45

49

29

54

7

26

42

30

43

28

35

42

38

8

32

61

63

75

18

42

58

38

ALL GR

29

29

32

38

33

41

47

46

3

35

42

16

22

43

56

48

45

4

25

27

36

30

31

35

56

38

5

10

28

30

32

36

44

29

44

ALL GR

24

33

28

28

36

46

45

42

6

21

21

25

24

28

27

34

25

7

21

28

34

42

21

21

38

45

8

25

40

43

44

21

20

23

33

ALL GR

23

30

34

39

23

23

32

36

15

20

11

10

72

56

44

48

MURRAY

3

13

18

32

39

36

65

60

14

18

22

32

20

20

31

34

NORTHVIEW

ROONEY

26

Reading SCHOOL/ GRADE

2007

Mathematics

Writing

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

Science

2009

2010

2008

2009

2010

42

32

33

3

0

0

WEIL INSTITUTE 3

31

59

39

35

26

50

41

38

4

46

20

32

33

42

33

50

44

5

31

41

28

48

42

47

52

50

6

16

28

33

35

34

52

36

72

7

19

31

61

22

11

27

61

35

8

20

44

50

71

17

38

35

42

ALL GR

27

38

39

39

28

41

45

46

Reading

25

39

39

58

33

29

35

43

Mathematics

Writing

State

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

3

73

77

77

75

79

81

82

85

4

70

70

73

73

78

80

82

85

5

60

62

65

64

71

73

74

74

6

64

67

68

69

70

72

76

78

7

67

70

71

74

67

71

75

78

8

75

78

81

82

68

70

71

75

2007

2008

Science

2009

2010

57

57

58

62

72

69

71

75

2008

2009

2010

82

83

81

53

55

57

Table 3 Student Outcomes for Buffalo’s Superintendent’s School District Difference Between School Proficiency and State Proficiency (Reading, Math, and Science), 2007 – 2 010

By School and Grade Because NY State assessments have fairly wide variability year to year (with an especially large dip in proficiency rates in 2010 due to a scoring re-calibration), the SSID are compared to the state to control for this variability. Numbers presented as difference between school for that subject and grade and state for that same subject and grade. Most cases are lower than the state proficiency rate and so appear as negative numbers, but, there are cases where the gap narrows. (In the case of negative numbers, the smaller the number, the smaller the gap.) Narrowing of 10 points or more (from 2007 to 2010, or 2007 to 2009, in the case of science and high school) is indicated in bold.

Reading SCHOOL/GRADE

2007

2008

Mathematics

Science

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

-23

-34

-39

-43

-38

-49

2010

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL OF TECHNOLOGY 3

-27

-37

-44

-43

-44

-39

-29

-45

4

-38

-39

-45

-51

-46

-45

-31

-53

5

-54

-47

-33

-46

-62

-56

-54

-60

6

-46

-49

-32

-35

-67

-68

-58

-48

7

-39

-46

-42

-38

-51

-48

-39

-35

8

-31

-45

-49

-31

-52

-46

-41

-41

27

Reading SCHOOL/GRADE

2007

2008

Mathematics

Science

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

-32

-44

-50

-22

-20

-46

2007

2008

2009

-26

-10

-2

-40

-16

-36

-11

-17

-13

7

13

-8

-28

-18

-28

-29

-26

-43

-58

-42

-39

-36

-39

-49

-4

5

-29

-24

-41

-17

-27

PANTOJA COMMUNITY SCHOOL 3

-50

-32

4

-44

-19

-10

-22

-29

-19

-2

-23

5

-40

-19

-29

-15

-40

-23

-26

-16

6

-39

-18

-18

-27

-22

-32

-18

-42

7

-45

-30

-27

-29

-38

-40

-38

-38

8

-36

-38

-58

-40

-25

-35

-14

-38

-34

-15

-21

-52

-23

3

-12

NATIVE AMERICAN MAGNET 3

-48

4

-13

-35

-35

-31

-14

-24

-24

-1

5

-30

-22

-14

-27

-48

-26

-28

-30

6

-34

-31

-9

-22

-46

-50

-8

-44

7

-40

-27

-18

-26

-51

-33

-28

-20

8

-20

-20

-48

-30

-26

-48

-3

-24

TUBMAN ACADEMY 3

-23

-9

-38

-43

-18

-13

-20

-53

4

-25

-8

-32

-55

-35

-19

-15

-52

5

-35

-27

-32

-36

-23

-17

-20

-44

6

-33

-24

-24

-30

-51

-24

-22

-21

7

-47

-43

-14

-36

-54

-59

-22

-21

8

-24

-44

-64

-46

-27

-42

-35

-31

PS 37 FUTURES ACADEMY 3

-57

-28

-48

-46

-57

-43

-12

-45

4

-41

-56

-51

-43

-55

-65

-42

-42

5

-27

-41

-62

-44

-57

-61

-63

-51

6

-46

-34

-37

-48

-52

-51

-63

-48

7

-49

-44

-41

-39

-54

-50

-32

-57

8

-43

-43

-60

-42

-46

-47

-23

-41

COMMUNITY SCHOOL #53 3

-27

-33

-48

-45

-28

-29

-25

-44

4

-27

-26

-30

-44

-29

-29

-41

-38

5

-44

-31

-42

-43

-65

-41

-49

-60

6

-51

-28

-9

-23

-25

-27

-14

-24

7

-41

-35

-34

-29

-49

-33

-20

-41

8

-47

-39

-51

-33

-54

-18

-9

-33

EARLY CHILDHOOD CENTER 3

-55

-42

-47

-22

-66

-44

-18

-12

4

-16

-41

-44

-41

-16

-38

-37

-47

HAMLIN PARK ELEMENTARY

28

3

-38

-35

-45

-45

-44

-29

-41

-47

4

-50

-39

-36

-44

-67

-42

-44

-33

5

-46

-44

-39

-41

-66

-46

-32

-45

-24

2010

Reading

Mathematics

Science

SCHOOL/GRADE

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

6

-50

-38

-34

-24

-39

-45

-43

-33

7

-38

-30

-38

-40

-45

-21

-41

-43

8

-34

-28

-64

-46

-40

-32

-26

-50

2007

2008

2009

-35

-15

-27

-44

-40

-21

-42

-26

-60

-46

-17

-34

-45

-39

-57

-30

-36

-31

-25

-20

-24

-44

-20

-47

-49

-48

-55

2010

HERMAN BADILLO COMMUNITY SCHOOL 3

-65

-40

-59

-42

-76

-31

-17

-47

4

-47

-55

-32

-45

-52

-49

-19

-45

5

-29

-39

-36

-39

-48

-62

-22

-43

6

-44

-43

-31

-38

-51

-36

-28

-37

7

-38

-53

-39

-34

-50

-71

-34

-35

8

-31

-41

-56

-38

-49

-52

-47

-37

WEST HERTEL ELEMENTARY 3

-29

-33

-39

-21

-52

-45

-13

-16

4

-48

-17

-23

-41

-45

-24

-5

-26

5

-57

-35

-43

-44

-65

-54

-21

-53

6

-48

-50

-31

-36

-43

-44

-33

-26

7

-40

-44

-43

-36

-58

-50

-40

-35

8

-40

-43

-52

-34

-50

-61

-42

-26

GRABIARZ SCHOOL OF EXCELLENCE 5

-37

-24

-21

-27

-43

-35

-15

-35

6

-42

-42

-11

-27

-41

-47

-5

-32

7

-44

-34

-33

-33

-53

-36

-30

-24

8

-36

-45

-53

-35

-40

-47

-7

-32

FRANK A SEDITA ELEMENTARY 3

-43

-22

-27

-31

-59

-9

-19

-34

4

-32

-33

-32

-26

-36

-20

-16

-28

5

-31

-44

-41

-29

-37

-40

-15

-33

6

-49

-29

-23

-24

-42

-34

-20

-44

7

-45

-51

-26

-28

-58

-51

-24

-43

8

-46

-39

-55

-37

-54

-48

-56

-43

HARVEY AUSTIN SCHOOL 5

-51

-46

-82

-53

-58

-67

-88

-65

6

-48

-48

-34

-7

-49

-59

-46

-24

7

-44

-49

-34

-4

-62

-50

-42

-17

8

-44

-48

-52

-34

-49

-61

-43

-18

-51

-49

-36

n/a

-61

-53

-47

n/a

-33

-30

-23

n/a

-42

-48

-33

n/a

-39

-32

n/a

-51

-51

-34

n/a

GROVER CLEVELAND HS 12 SOUTH PARK HS 12

BURGARD VOCATIONAL HS 12

-43

29

Reading

30

Mathematics

Science

State

2007

2008

2009

2010

2007

2008

2009

2010

3

67

70

76

55

85

90

93

59

4

68

71

77

57

80

84

87

64

5

68

78

82

53

76

83

88

65

6

63

67

81

54

71

79

83

61

7

58

70

80

50

66

79

87

62

8

57

56

69

51

59

70

80

55

12

72

75

77

74

76

77

2007

2008

2009

85

85

88

65

56

69

2010

National Center on Time & Learning The National Center on Time & Learning is dedicated to expanding learning time to improve student achievement and enable a well-rounded education.

Through research, public policy and technical assistance, we support national, state and local initiatives that add significantly more school time to help children meet the demands of the 21st century.

Contributing Writer Jennifer Davis, Co-Founder and President, National Center on Time & Learning

Acknowledgements The National Center on Time & Learning gratefully acknowledges the administrators, teachers, and students in the profiled schools and districts for their insights and information, and for demonstrating their commitment to improving education every day. We thank, in particular, the following individuals and schools : Buffalo, New York Dr. James Williams, Superintendent of Schools Amber Dixon, Executive Director of Evaluation, Accountability, and Project Initiatives Herman Badillo Community School Grabiarz School of Excellence Early Childhood Learning Center Volusia County, Florida Dr. Chris Colwell, Deputy Superintendent Carolyn Gardinier, Director, Title I Services Edith Starke Elementary School Holly Hill Elementary School Westside Elementary School Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Mark Roosevelt, Former Superintendent of Schools (2005 – 2010) Dr. Christiane Otuwa, Assistant Superintendent, Accelerated Learning Academies Colfax K – 8 School Fort Pitt Elementary School Murray PreK – 8 School We also appreciate the contributions of the NCTL team, including : Colleen Beaudoin, Program Director Blair Brown, Director of Communications & External Affairs George Mastoras, Program Associate Diane Sherlock, Editorial Director We thank the districts for sharing photographs from their schools, including: Buffalo – p. 2, p. 4, p. 12, p. 22 Pittsburgh – Cover, p. 15, p. 17 Volusia – p. 8, p. 20, p. 24

Electronic copies of both the full report and executive summary are available at : www.timeandlearning.org. Printed copies of the executive summary can be obtained by calling (617) 723-6747

31

www.timeandlearning.org 24 School Street, 3rd Floor Boston MA 02108 phone : 617.723.6747 fax : 617 . 723 . 6746