I continue to be fascinated with how our current public school system struggles to use time differently.
Public schools continue to define their time by 8-hour days, 5-day weeks, 6-week grading periods, and 180-day school years.
Even those districts that attempt to deviate from the norm run into challenges.
Take for example the 27J school district outside Denver, Colorado.
According to a recent Chalkbeat report, titled “Four-Day School Week Hurt Housing Market, Academics in the 27J District, Study Suggests”,
“Homeowners in the 27J school district might have been better off paying a higher property tax rather than allowing the district to adopt a four-day school week, a new study suggests.”
“Preliminary results of the study, which has not yest been peer reviewed, suggest that home prices suffered and student achievement in the district may have dropped. Teacher retention, which the district cited as the main reason for moving to the four-day school week, may also have decreased, according to the study.”
“The 27J school district, which serves more than 22,600 students this year, is based north of Denver, covering Brighton and parts of Commerce City and Thornton. Leaders rolled out the four-day school week in the fall of 2018, after having failed a sixth time to pass a local tax increase to pay teachers more.”
“District Superintendent Chris Fiedler disputes the findings, citing higher-than-ever graduation rates and lower overall teacher turnover.”
“The authors of the study acknowledge there were limitations in the way they examined student achievement and teacher retention pieces. They didn’t want to look at years affected by COVID, so they only examined student achievement data through the 2019-20 school year. For teacher retention data they examined data through the 2020-21 school year. So it’s possible the findings were short-term impacts, said Frank James Perrone, one of the study’s authors.”
“When it comes to student achievement, research would ideally track individual students, said, Perrone, assistant professor at Indiana University. Since the researchers couldn’t access that level of data, it’s unknown if some of the findings could have been a result of higher-performing students leaving the district.”
“The research is more comprehensive and based on more data when it comes to the housing findings. While housing prices in 27J haven’t dropped, home values stopped growing at the same rate relative to its most comparable neighboring district. Therefore, homeowners lost out on growth that they likely would have seen without the change, according to the study.”
“The researchers calculated those losses compared to the cost of paying for the mill levy override and found that, financially, conservative estimates suggest homeowners would have been better off approving the tax measure.”
“’These results suggest the decision to adopt a 4-day school week in a metropolitan setting should not be taken lightly,’ the study states.”
Along with our public education system’s infatuation with school days, school years rank high in how time is used within traditional settings.
Recently I came across an EdSource article titled “Study of LAUSD Confirms Benefits of Four Years of Math; Superintendent Alberto Carvalho Embraces Findings.” In the article it is reported that,
“New research that tacked high school juniors in Los Angeles Unified found that those who took math as seniors – from algebra to advanced calculus – were better positioned to enroll and stay in college than those who didn’t.”
“[The study] offers further evidence that most students, not just those interested in STEM majors, could benefit from an extra year of math and that that message should be reinforced among students who have been less inclined to take it, such as those who would be the first in their family to attend college.”
“LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho said he plans to act on the findings. ‘We are now further armed with information and additional offerings of mathematics in the senior year,’ he said, adding that he plans to pass on the results not only to high school principals, but also to parent, who need to know about the advantages of a fourth year of math.”
When did we decide to measure learning by hours, days, weeks, and years? When did we decide that time would be the constant and learning the variable, and not the other way around?
Notice how many news stories about public education are couched in terms of time that define how and when learning occurs.
Learning time should be dependent on a young learner’s individual learning plan. To achieve a learning goal, it shouldn’t matter whether a school district decides on a four-day instructional week or to offer a fourth year of math. What matters is that time is assigned based on the learning goals itself by asking the young learner a simple question: How long do you think it will take you to achieve this goal?
In 35 years of public school service, I can’t remember an adult learning leader asking a young learner that question once.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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