How a Massachusetts School Narrowed the Achievement Gap: More and Better Learning Time
Curriculum & Instruction
Summary from The Hechinger Report
A new report on lengthened school days describes the process of principal Lori Butterfield as part of a district-wide improvement effort. At her school, Guilmette Elementary, they took a year to plan an expansion learning time. At Guilmette, 300 hours per year were added. The school day now goes from 7:30 a.m. to 3:35 pm. Results in the first year have been promising.
Led by the National Center on Time & Learning, with funding
from the Ford Foundation to support the intensive planning
process, each school community in the district engaged in an
effort to create a new school design to better meet the needs of
students and teachers.
Identified instructional priorities included reading
comprehension, experiential learning, and teacher collaboration.
Each district school now has a “Learning Lab,” providing time
each day for students needing the most help; they are assigned to
small groups where they receive targeted interventions from
instructional coaches and special education teachers within the
context of the normal classroom. Assessing students’ progress and
regrouping them to support them as needed is part of the process.
At the same time, students who are doing well take part in
accelerated studies, like joining small debate teams or learning
new math skills during the learning lab.
“The dedicated time for intervention preserves a well-rounded
curriculum, including science and social studies, for all
children, since in the past students who had struggled in reading
and math were taken out of science and social studies to receive
additional help. This practice represented a compromise that no
school should ever have to make for lack of time in the
schedule.”
Recent increases in achievement. In a
school where 90 percent of students receive a free or reduced
price lunch and nearly 40 percent are not native English
speakers, Guilmette has seen significant gains after one year of
its redesigned schedule.
- 46% of 3rd and 4th graders were reading proficient in 2014 (10% increase from 2013)
- 63% of 3rd and 4th graders were math proficient in 2014 (5% increase from 2013)
