Is there an Excessive Utilization of School Hours?
Is there an Excessive Utilization of School Hours?
For scholars, the academic year might seem endless. Educators might view it as concise and insufficient. Policy creators might perceive it as remarkably adaptable, capable of incorporating an extra obligatory course on a pressing issue of the moment.
Critics of public education, tracing back to the Reagan-era "A Nation at Risk", have frequently resonated with the sentiments of a harsh restaurant critic (subpar food and meager servings) by advocating for an extended school day or year.
The necessary hours during the year vary from state to state, with Arizona mandating 720 hours and Texas requiring 1,260. Eight states currently embrace the four-day school week. States establish minimums, but numerous local school districts opt to surpass them. U.S. schools typically run under 7 hours a day, approximating 180 days a year.
Globally, there's notable disparity. Leading Finland enjoys a roughly five-hour school day encompassing break time and lunch. Chinese high school students endure school days prolonging 10-12 hours.
New research from Matthew Kraft (Brown University) and Sarah Novicoff (Stanford) sheds more light on how America utilizes its school hours (the full paper is here behind a paywall, but the working paper version is available here [link2]).
Some of their conclusions are straightforward and beneficial. According to Kraft, who spoke with Cory Turner at NPR, "Four-day school weeks are detrimental to student learning and do not appear to boost teacher retention." Four-day weeks result in significantly fewer educational hours for students.
The study found that the disparity between the most and least hours spent in schools equates to approximately 200 hours—equivalent to more than five weeks of school.
Teachers will be intrigued by the segment of the paper focusing on instructional hours lost during the day. The researchers conducted an in-depth study of the Providence Public School District and discovered a familiar list of distractions for educators. In addition to behavioral issues and lesson transitions, time is squandered due to student absence, external interruptions, and teacher absence.
Many interruptions are within the jurisdiction of school administration and simple policies, such as those governing when announcements can be made or how and when students are summoned to the office. Although these may appear minor issues, they accumulate. Taking a student out of class may only disturb that class for five minutes, but if this occurs every day for 180 days, that amounts to 15 hours of teaching time. The researchers identified a total of 258 hours of teaching time lost in a year.
The aforementioned 258 hours did not account for other issues, such as non-instructional activities. The research did not address the instructional time lost to standardized tests, time spent not just taking the test but also preparing and rehearsing for it.
The researchers also emphasize another challenge. While instructional time is pivotal in schools, schools serve as a social atmosphere where children and teenagers learn to interact socially. A school could impose a policy of no distractions whatsoever during school hours, but the loss of humanity in student learning might be substantial in such a system. Schools are "complex social organizations where unforeseen events frequently happen."
The researchers recommend that states with low requirements boost them. Although the financial burden of lengthening undisturbed learning time might be prohibitive for certain districts, any districts can explore options such as later start times for older students and morning core classes to maximize student productivity during their most productive hours of the day.
The researchers also concur with a recommendation that most teachers would also endorse; the main office in every building can prioritize instructional time, interrupting only for the most pressing and urgent emergencies.
The criticism towards public education, as noted in the Reagan-era "A Nation at Risk," often advocates for an extended school day or year due to perceived subpar education hours. Despite variability in mandatory hours across American states, U.S. schools typically run under 7 hours a day, approximating 180 days a year.
Extending the school day or year could potentially address the significant discrepancy in educational hours, with the study revealing a difference of approximately 200 hours between the most and least hours spent in schools. This equivalence is equivalent to more than five weeks of school.