More time in school means better results, right? Well, not necessarily according to American Enterprise Institute education scholar Dr. Frederick Hess who’s been making the podcast rounds discussing his latest book, The Great School Rethink. Studying the length of the school year is not a new endeavor – numerous scholars have analyzed the subject over the years trying to connect the dots on how best to optimize school time and produce better academic outcomes.
Most people would say without hesitation that adding days to the school year must certainly be a solution to the problem of sorely lacking academic performance. This last spring, the New Mexico Legislature passed House Bill 130 that extends the school year by 10 additional days. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham lauded the bill’s passage saying, “The more time in the classroom, better results.”
But is the governor right? Will New Mexico see better academic results and improve upon their last-in-the-nation educational ranking by keeping students in classrooms longer each school year? Time will tell, but keep that extra large grain of salt handy when a politician guarantees an outcome. After all, there is evidence that more hours don’t always mean better results.
During a recent appearance on The Remnant podcast, Hess raised some good points on the matter. Simply spending millions of dollars to extend the school year by two weeks won’t necessarily get the desired results if teachers are constantly losing instructional time to classroom interruptions and transitions. Brown University Professor Matthew Kraft found that on average, classrooms in Providence, Rhode Island had about 2,000 interruptions/year, which equates to about 10-20 instructional days (2-4 weeks) during a school year.
Moreover, while it’s common to hear that American K-12 students spend less time in school each year compared with their peers from other countries, the numbers tell a different story. As it turns out, American students from kindergarten through 8th grade cumulatively spend 1,300 hours more on average in school than the OECD median.
It seems wise, then, to assess how to maximize instructional time within current school hours before making major policy decisions to increase hours. From there we can begin to better economize on the time allotted for each school day and improve student outcomes.
Rather than jumping to increasing the amount of time in school, perhaps it’s best to first ask ourselves how do we organize the days so that students spend more time on the things that matter?
Brenda Dickhoner, Ph.D., is president and CEO of Ready Colorado, an education-reform advocacy organization that believes all children have a right to a high-quality education.
