A Few More Points About Charter Schools And Extended Time
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that made a fairly simple point about the practice of expressing estimated charter effects on test scores as “days of additional learning”: Among the handful of states, districts, and multi-site operators that consistently have been shown to have a positive effect on testing outcomes, might not those “days of learning” be explained, at least in part, by the fact that they actually do offer additional days of learning, in the form of much longer school days and years?
That is, there is a small group of charter models/chains that seem to get good results. There are many intangible factors that make a school effective, but to the degree we can chalk this up to concrete practices or policies, additional time may be the most compelling possibility. Although it’s true that school time must be used wisely, it’s difficult to believe that the sheer amount of extra time that the flagship chains offer would not improve testing performance substantially.
To their credit, many charter advocates do acknowledge the potentially crucial role of extended time in explaining their success stories. And the research, tentative though it still is, is rather promising. Nevertheless, there are a few important points that bear repeating when it comes to the idea of massive amounts of additional time, particularly given the fact that there is a push to get regular public schools to adopt the practice.
We’re talking about massive amounts of additional time. The first and most simple point, which I have madebefore, is to remember that, when it comes to big name charter chains, we’re not just talking about an additional week or two of school. We’re talking about additional months. By adding 2-3 hours to the regular public school day, which is usually 6-7 hours, most of the big name chains offer 30-50 percent more time in school, the regular public school equivalent of up to four months (regular public schools, of course, could not achieve this increase without lengthening the school day, even if they eliminated the summer and all vacations).
To be clear, this is not a criticism. Quite the contrary; many such schools serve children in high-poverty neighborhoods who begin schooling far behind their more advantaged peers. And keeping struggling students in school longer might be one way to help them catch up. But let’s not forget that, in these cases, “extended time” means a lot of extension.
Large-scale time extension is a somewhat blunt instrument. This brings me to my second point on this issue, one that is deliberately provocative. It might be posed as a question: After 20 years, is this the biggest concreteShanker Blog » A Few More Points About Charter Schools And Extended Time: