Download or read book Financing Expanded Learning Time in Schools written by Claire Kaplan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the last several years, public education in the U.S. has experienced a remarkable growth in the number of schools that have expanded their schedules beyond the conventional calendar of 180 6.5-hour days. Spurred by significant policy activity at the federal, state, and local levels, more and more educators have capitalized on opportunities to increase their school days and years to put in place a host of whole-school strategies that aim to improve educational quality and outcomes. In its latest count, National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) identified over 1,500 of these schools, about 900 of which are district (i.e., non-charter) schools. The educators implementing these reforms at schools serving more than half a million students--the vast majority of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds--believe that having more time in productive learning environments, offers the potential for a higher quality education and a stronger future. Today, the many district schools that have undergone a conversion to expanded school time (or that were established with a longer day and/or year) offer the field of education a valuable supply of information about how such expansion can be implemented despite inevitable challenges around financing, programming, and staffing. Indeed, educators and policymakers seeking to generate school improvement through expanded time would do well to learn from those who have engaged in such efforts before them. They also would benefit from understanding the wide variety of ways in which district schools have implemented, paid for, and structured expanded school time, if only to appreciate that there is no single model or set of models that defines the field. This finance study is produced by NCTL, in partnership with the educational consulting group Cross & Joftus. Taking a careful look at five different models of expanded-time district schools, this study unpacks the realities of implementing more school time--the funding sources, challenges, and opportunities--from financial and educational perspectives. The authors examine both these aspects because they are inextricably linked, and one cannot understand financing without describing the programming and staffing that the dollars pay for. Their hope is that these brief case studies, together with the analysis of common themes and key findings, will offer several cost models and provide some preliminary answers to the question of how schools and districts pay for expanded learning time. The five case studies include: (1) Griffith Elementary School (Balsz, Arizona); (2) Dr. Orlando Edreira Academy (Elizabeth, New Jersey); (3) McGlone Elementary School (Denver, Colorado); (4) Elmhurst Community Prep (Oakland, California); and (5) Orchard Gardens K-8 Pilot School (Boston, Massachusetts).

Download or read book Expanded Learning Time written by Jennifer McMurrer and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many low-performing schools across the nation have increased learning time in response to federal requirements for the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. The conditions governing federal waivers of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) also require certain schools to redesign the school day, week, or year to include additional time for student learning and teacher collaboration. Furthermore, the waivers allow greater flexibility to redirect certain federal funding streams toward increased learning time. This report by the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at the George Washington University summarizes the findings of a series of case studies of 17 low-performing schools within 11 school districts in four geographically dispersed states--Connecticut, Colorado, Oregon, and Virginia. This research examined state and local efforts to expand learning time through the unique lens of state and local responses to specific federal provisions. In particular, we investigated the strategies being used by the case study sites to meet federal requirements and encouragements for increased or expanded learning time, and the challenges, successes, and impacts associated with this implementation process. All four states in this study have been granted ESEA waivers. Most of the case study schools received SIG funds and/or were identified as "priority" schools under ESEA waivers, meaning that they were among the lowest-performing schools in their state. From October 2013 through March 2014, CEP staff and consultants visited all of the participating districts and the majority of participating schools. We interviewed 49 education leaders, including 13 state education officials, 18 district leaders, and 18 school principals. We also gathered information from state ESEA waiver applications and other relevant state, district, and school policy documents. As explained later in this report, different federal initiatives use different terminology and definitions for provisions that have the common goal of adding time for student learning and for teacher collaboration, professional development, or planning. For simplicity's sake, this report uses the umbrella term of "expanded learning time," or ELT, to describe these various approaches. Throughout this report, the findings are supported by examples from specific districts and schools. Key findings included: (1) Case study schools are meeting the federal requirements to expand learning time, but ELT is costly, and the short-term nature of federal grants is causing difficulties for some schools; (2) Case study districts and schools differ in when and how they expand learning time; (3) State, district, and school leaders participating in these case studies often emphasized that improving the quality of instruction in low-performing schools was just as important as increasing the quantity of instructional time; (4) There was evidence of improved student outcomes in some, but not all, of the case study schools; however, several schools were in the early stages of ELT implementation at the time of the study; (5) Few case study districts and schools were taking advantage of the flexibility afforded by waivers to redirect certain federal funding streams to ELT; (6) States and districts varied in their level of involvement and support for ELT initiatives in schools; (7) Implementing ELT sometimes required negotiations with teachers' unions about such issues as contractual time and compensation; and (8) Teacher and student fatigue from longer school days was cited as a challenge in implementing ELT in all four states studied. More detailed information can be found in the individual reports developed by CEP for each of the four states and 11 districts. These detailed reports, plus three appendices, are available on the CEP website (www.cep-dc.org). [This report was written with the assistance of Nancy Kober.].

Download or read book Expanding Minds and Opportunities written by Terry K. Peterson and published by . This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding Minds and Opportunities: Leveraging the Power of Afterschool and Summer Learning for Student Success presents an impressive and significant body of work that comprises almost 70 reports, research studies, essays, articles, and commentaries by more than 100 authors representing a range of researchers, educators, policy makers, and professionals in the field, as well as thought leaders and opinion influencers. Collectively, these writings boldly state that there is now a solid base of research and best practices clearly showing that quality afterschool and summer learning programs-including 21st Century Community Learning Centers-make a positive difference for students, families, schools, and communities.

Download or read book K 12 Education written by Jacqueline M. Nowicki and published by . This book was released on 2015-01-27 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, a key strategy for improving student outcomes has been to extend learning time by lengthening the school day or year. In 2010, the Department of Education (Education) made significant changes to its School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, funded at about $506 million in FY 2015, including requiring schools to extend learning time in certain instances. In 2012, Education began to invite waiver requests from states to use funds from its $1.2 billion 21st Century program to conduct authorized activities during extended learning time. This report examines (1) various Education programs that can be used to support extended learning time for K-12 students; and (2) learning time in public schools nationwide. Figures. This is a print on demand report.

Download or read book Making Summer Count written by Jennifer Sloan McCombs and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2011 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite long-term and ongoing efforts to close the achievement gap between disadvantaged and advantaged students, low-income students continue to perform at considerably lower levels than their higher-income peers in reading and mathematics. Research has shown that students' skills and knowledge often deteriorate during the summer months, with low-income students facing the largest losses. Instruction during the summer has the potential to stop these losses and propel students toward higher achievement. A review of the literature on summer learning loss and summer learning programs, coupled with data from ongoing programs offered by districts and private providers across the United States, demonstrates the potential of summer programs to improve achievement as well as the challenges in creating and maintaining such programs. School districts and summer programming providers can benefit from the existing research and lessons learned by other programs in terms of developing strategies to maximize program effectiveness and quality, student participation, and strategic partnerships and funding. Recommendations for providers and policymakers address ways to mitigate barriers by capitalizing on a range of funding sources, engaging in long-term planning to ensure adequate attendance and hiring, and demonstrating positive student outcomes.

Download or read book Expanded Learning Time and Opportunities written by Helen Janc Malone and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-11-15 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Expanding the learning day is gaining national momentum as an important school-improvement and whole-child development strategy. This issue focuses on school-community partnerships that provide a seamless, longer learning day that best meets the academic (Expanded Learning Time or ELT) and developmental (Expanded Learning Opportunities or ELO) needs of high-poverty students in resource-poor communities. First it draws attention to the importance of ELOs and offers contours of the ELT-ELO partnerships through research evidence and policy analysis. It then covers both in practice and features a spectrum of ELT-ELO partnerships, from less to more integrated models. The issue pays close attention to: The central role ELOs play in ELT schools The changing safeguards for community-based organizations Ways in which current education policy is shaping the approach of schools and community partners to learning and development. This is the 131st volume of New Directions for Youth Development, the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions.

Download or read book K Education written by United States Government Accountability Office and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 28 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: K-Education: Federal Funding for and Characteristics of Public Schools with Extended Learning Time

Download or read book Time to Learn written by Christopher Gabrieli and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2008-04-25 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Across the country, an educational revolution is taking root. Kids are learning more. Teachers are free to teach beyond the test. And parents aren’t worried about what their kids are up to after school. What accounts for this change? The simple answer is, “More time to learn.” The current school day—6 hours and 180 days per year—is obsolete. It fails to provide students with the academic foundations and well-rounded education they need to succeed and thrive in the twenty-first century. The old school day is also out of step with the reality of working families without a stay-at-home parent to manage their children’s after-school time. Using an additional one to two hours, the new school day reworks the schedule so that children can master core academic subjects, receive individualized instruction and tutoring, and be exposed to a broad array of topics such as the arts, music, drama, and sports.

Download or read book Making Money Matter written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-12-30 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States annually spends over $300 billion on public elementary and secondary education. As the nation enters the 21st century, it faces a major challenge: how best to tie this financial investment to the goal of high levels of achievement for all students. In addition, policymakers want assurance that education dollars are being raised and used in the most efficient and effective possible ways. The book covers such topics as: Legal and legislative efforts to reduce spending and achievement gaps. The shift from "equity" to "adequacy" as a new standard for determining fairness in education spending. The debate and the evidence over the productivity of American schools. Strategies for using school finance in support of broader reforms aimed at raising student achievement. This book contains a comprehensive review of the theory and practice of financing public schools by federal, state, and local governments in the United States. It distills the best available knowledge about the fairness and productivity of expenditures on education and assesses options for changing the finance system.

Download or read book K 12 Education written by U S Government Accountability Offi Gao and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-06-07 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: K-12 Education: Federal Funding for and Characteristics of Public Schools with Extended Learning Time

Download or read book States Need to Fill in the Gaps on Expanded Learning Time written by Isabel Owen and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Schedule redesign is only one small part of the much larger approach to turning around low-performing schools. Even so, most states' No Child Left Behind waiver applications show a disappointing lack of detail on learning time. While they've done some careful thinking about schedule redesign, states must continue to think critically and comprehensively about their current use of time and how it can be better used to improve instruction. More time used well can lead to powerful results. There is a growing body of research detailing best practices that states can use as guidance, so there is no excuse for providing sparse detail if states are serious about schedule redesign. Waivers open up sizeable funding streams for expanding learning time. Yet neither states nor the U.S. Department of Education should be satisfied with the bare minimum when thinking about schedule redesign. It would be quite easy for a priority school to add some time to the end of the school day, satisfying the requirement, and not see any change in student outcomes. States must ensure that districts and schools have the guidance and information necessary to think critically about how more time can be used to the advantage of students and teachers. As is the case with all other intervention strategies, additional learning time and schedule redesign should be thought of as one part of a larger approach to improving instruction and learning. Increasing learning time in school is easy, but using additional time wisely is hard. Simply adding more time to the end of the day or year is wasted. For the most part states did not treat time as a valuable resource in their waiver applications. They would be wise to keep thinking about meaningful schedule redesign as they work to implement intervention strategies, because after all, the clock is ticking. (Contains 36 endnotes.).

Download or read book Financing Schools for High Performance written by Allan Odden and published by Jossey-Bass. This book was released on 1998-04-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential resource provides a roadmap for redirecting school funds in ways that will dramatically improve student performance. Lead author Allan Odden3⁄4one of the nation?s foremost scholars in school finance3⁄4offers a vision of finance reform that will give local schools more control over their budgets and ultimately boost student performance. Allan Odden and Carolyn Busch look at the inefficiencies in current education spending, examine varied approaches to school-based financing, and offer recommendations for restructuring financing systems to meet ambitious reform goals. In addition, they propose ways to make funding more equitable across districts, outline the various elements that make school-based management work, and describe the key roles and responsibilities for the district even in a decentralized system. Financing Schools for High Performance is filled with examples of creative finance structures, formulas, and actual school budgets that support student learning and rigorous instructional programs. It will prove to be an indispensable aid for state, district, and school-level administrators.

Download or read book Investing in Successful Summer Programs written by Jennifer Sloan McCombs and published by . This book was released on 2021-06-30 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research evidence suggests that summer breaks contribute to income-based achievement and opportunity gaps for children and youth. However, summertime can also be used to provide programs that support an array of goals for children and youth, including improved academic achievement, physical health, mental health, social and emotional well-being, the acquisition of skills, and the development of interests. This report is intended to provide practitioners, policymakers, and funders current information about the effectiveness of summer programs designed for children and youth entering grades K-12. Policymakers increasingly expect that the creation of and investment in summer programs will be based on research evidence. Notably, the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) directs schools and districts to adopt programs that are supported by research evidence if those programs are funded by specific federal streams. Although summer programs can benefit children and youth who attend, not all programs result in improved outcomes. RAND researchers identified 43 summer programs with positive outcomes that met the top three tiers of ESSA's evidence standards. These programs were identified through an initial literature search of 3,671 citations and a full-text review of 1,360 documents and address academic learning, learning at home, social and emotional well-being, and employment and career outcomes. The authors summarize the evidence and provide detailed information on each of the 43 programs, focusing on the evidence linking summer programs with outcomes and classifying the programs according to the top three evidence tiers (strong, moderate, or promising evidence) consistent with ESSA and subsequent federal regulatory guidance.

Download or read book Redesigning and Expanding School Time to Support Common Core Implementation written by David A. Farbman and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards, public education in the United States is poised to take a major step forward in readying the next generation of Americans for success in higher education and the workforce. Gaining a realistic understanding of students' performance levels, meeting students where they currently are, and raising them to new heights are the tasks at hand and will require more intensive and time-consuming teaching and learning than schools commonly provide now. Fortunately, federal and state policies that support efforts to increase the amount of time students spend in school are resulting in new resources--and freeing up formerly restricted resources--to fund the creation of more expanded-time schools. The Center for American Progress and the National Center on Time & Learning believe that "expanded learning time" provides both teachers and students with one of the critical tools that they need to meet the demands of the Common Core State Standards. Of course, the additional learning time must be well planned and intentional, therefore, in this report, the authors offer seven recommendations that should help with meeting the demands associated with the Common Core for teachers and students. High-quality expanded learning time is one of the most far-reaching implementation strategies and can enable students to successfully meet these higher expectations. In addition to an introduction and summary, this report also provides information on the authors, a section on acknowledgments, and a list of endnotes.

Download or read book Learning Time written by Marisa Saunders and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the authors focus on how learning time--including the nature, quality, and quantity of that time--differs dramatically for affluent children and poor children and also explore a range of ways to improve the quality and quantity of learning time for children in poverty--

Download or read book Extending Learning Time for Disadvantaged Students Profiles of promising practices written by and published by . This book was released on 1995 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Evaluation of the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time ELT Initiative written by Amy Checkoway and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time (ELT) initiative provides grants to selected schools to redesign their schedules by adding 300-plus instructional hours to the school year to improve outcomes, broaden enrichment opportunities, and provide teachers with more planning and professional development time. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) and Abt Associates, with grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences (IES), completed a five year study of the ELT initiative to examine three primary research questions: (1) How has expanded learning time been implemented in schools that receive ELT grants?; (2) What are the outcomes of expanded learning time for schools, students, and teachers?; and (3) What is the relationship between implementation and outcomes? This study included 24 elementary, middle, and K-8 ELT schools that were funded by the state and 25 matched comparison schools. As random assignment of schools or students to ELT was not feasible, this study's impact analysis relies upon a strong longitudinal quasi-experimental design: a comparative interrupted time-series approach that leverages pre-program data and data from matched comparison schools to produce estimated effects representing differences between ELT and comparison schools beyond what one might expect given pre-program measures and other secular initiatives affecting all schools. Analyses of non-academic outcomes rely on cross-sectional survey data and use multi-level models that produce estimates of differences between ELT and comparison schools to approximate what would have happened in the absence of ELT. Each year, longitudinal student-level MCAS and other extant data for both ELT and matched comparison schools are analyzed. One of the study's key contributions was to integrate implementation and outcomes data using an index based on principles of effective ELT operation; this implementation index provides a measure of fidelity that can be used both to understand school-level implementation and to explore relationships between implementation and outcomes. Findings from the study reveal the following: (1) More ELT teachers were satisfied with time available for instruction and planning, and reported that they spend sufficient instructional time with students. Fewer ELT teachers reported that student academic performance and homework completion rates were problem areas; (2) More teachers in ELT schools reported that teacher and staff fatigue, as well as student fatigue, were problems in their respective schools; (3) Generally, there were no statistically significant effects of ELT on student achievement; (4) Descriptive analysis linking the level of implementation in ELT schools and student achievement outcomes indicate no clear patterns or meaningful relationships; (5) Exploratory analysis of differential effects of ELT in higher- versus lower-implementing schools indicates minimal heterogeneity in the effect by the level of ELT implementation; and (6) The school reform landscape is dynamic; each year, more schools (outside of this ELT initiative) appear to be expanding the amount of time in their school year as well as implementing reforms consistent with the core ELT components. Exhibits are appended.