Post by macrockett on Sept 22, 2010 9:49:48 GMT -6
www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-time-school-year-20100921,0,756616.story
chicagotribune.com
School days shrinking in Illinois
Most districts dip below the required 176 days
By Diane Rado, Tribune reporter
7:40 PM CDT, September 21, 2010
Advertisement
America's traditional 180-day school year is more myth than reality in Illinois, as a jumble of state laws, rules and waivers allow districts to chip away instruction time, shorten school hours and cut the number of days students come to school.
While Illinois requires 176 days of "actual pupil attendance" — already fewer than most states — the vast majority of public school districts dip below that by one or two days and sometimes more, a Tribune analysis has found.
Some 400,000 students in Chicago Public Schools attend school 170 days, with permission from state lawmakers. A similar waiver allows a suburban district to shave eight days off its calendar so teachers can work on improving student achievement when students aren't there.
What's more, the Tribune found that in many districts, a day isn't necessarily a day.
Hundreds of districts send kids home early or have them come in late — even as much as once a week — to give teachers time to get training, meet with parents or collaborate. Districts can count these shortened days toward attendance requirements.
Across the state, nearly 3,000 half-day school improvement days are scheduled this year in 622 districts. That's up about 30 percent compared with 2005, according to a Tribune review of school calendar data from 860 districts.
Not including partial days, the Tribune found that Illinois students, on average, will attend school about 171 full days this year.
"What is happening unfortunately in the United States is that we are cutting learning times for students in order to provide more time for teachers to plan. Our view is that we actually have to do both, in other words, increase time for teachers and increase time for students," said Jennifer Davis, president of the National Center on Time & Learning in Boston.
To be sure, there isn't a consensus around whether adding more school days or hours will guarantee higher achievement. Still, the Obama administration has been pushing for more learning time to help jump-start academic performance in the lowest-performing schools.
Educators say analyzing data, coordinating lesson plans and training teachers are critical to improving schools. But paying teachers for extra time for those activities is difficult to impossible given the squeeze on school budgets and the nature of labor contracts.
Instead, Illinois districts are increasing the number of partial student days in the calendar.
In Zion Elementary School District 6, students go home an hour and 10 minutes early on 34 Wednesdays to make time for school improvement planning. Overall, Zion's students get 138 days with the normal school hours.
Students in DuPage County's Glenbard Township High School District 87 are dismissed 40 minutes early on 31 Mondays, leaving 145 normal days.
The newspaper found only one district in Illinois offering 180 full days of school this year: Glenview Public School District 34.
There, the school board has made it a priority to "have as many full days and full weeks as possible," said Superintendent Gerald Hill.
A few years ago, the district floated the idea of adding early-release or late-arrival days so teachers could collaborate during regular school hours. But parents raised concerns, he said, such as, "'I'm working, and where is my child going to go?' And, 'I need to have a consistent schedule if I'm going to have sanity in my life.' "
So instead, Glenview teachers have four hours per month of professional development activities after school. During contract negotiations, salaries were adjusted to compensate teachers for that time, Hill said.
Elsewhere, districts note that they are following state rules: They're allowed to have an unlimited number of half-day school improvement days as long as their normal school day exceeds 300 minutes of instruction. That is Illinois' minimum requirement, which also lags national averages.
Any instruction more than 300 minutes each day can go toward shortening a school day in the future. The Chicago and Tinley Park districts use minutes more than 300 to reduce school days in the academic year.
The formula means families can find themselves juggling a variety of shortened schedules.
On a recent Friday in Lake Villa, parent Carrie Stargardt was picking up her third-grader at Thompson Elementary School at 2:25 p.m. — an hour earlier than normal. Students in Lake Villa School District 41 get out early on 33 Fridays.
On Mondays, Stargardt's high school daughter starts 1 1/2 hours late at Lakes Community High School. Community High School District 117 has 24 "late-start" Mondays.
Though her children love the short days, Stargardt said, she was surprised by how many there are. A recent Wisconsin transplant, she said shortened days were unusual there.
Some parents have pushed back.
In Tinley Park, District 146 got rid of half-days because parents grew disgruntled over scheduling, said Nancy Schwab, director of curriculum and staff development. In addition, the shortened days "were less productive for children; the instruction was chopped," she said.
The district got permission from the Illinois General Assembly to provide eight full days for school improvement planning, leaving 168 full school days for students.
Likewise, CPS no longer provides 10 half-day school improvement days, which were considered disruptive. The district got permission from lawmakers to provide four full days for school improvement planning, leaving 170 full days for children.
Some districts added time to the regular school day to offset the minutes lost to shortened planning days.
For example, in Zion's District 6, Superintendent John Ahlgrim said students used to be dismissed at 2:50 p.m., but the district pushed that back to 3:10 four days a week.
Overall, time in school is a complex topic, educators say, because simply adding more time may not produce better student performance, depending on a host of variables. Research findings have been mixed, with some studies showing no link between time and achievement, but with others showing a relationship.
Nevertheless, the federal government has been awarding federal grants to states willing to make major changes to turn around failing schools, including offering longer school days, weeks or years that will add more instruction time for students and more professional development time for teachers.
Likewise, the Illinois State Board of Education will be awarding grants in the coming months to districts that use strategies to improve academic performance at struggling schools, including adding more learning time.
However, the board is not pursuing mandates to lengthen the school day or year for all districts, spokeswoman Mary Fergus said, in part because of costs.
More time generally means more taxpayer money to pay teachers to work more days or stay longer at school. And to add more time, local boards would have to renegotiate labor contracts that usually lay out how many days and hours teachers can work.
Glenbard District 87 reported the lowest number of full school days — 145 — of all high school districts in Illinois. Students are released early on 31 Mondays.
Teachers there acknowledge the quandary inherent in cutting short student instruction so staff can work on school improvement.
"Clearly, we're concerned about that because student contact minutes is one of the most important things," said Erica Bray-Parker, a government and psychology teacher and a teachers union leader at Glenbard North High School. However, she said, "I really believe that the more we as a team collaborate, the higher quality my teaching will be on a day-to-day basis."
On a recent Monday, she and other social studies teachers used 45 minutes of school improvement time to scrutinize test results and see how students fared in mastering concepts taught in class.
"We went through question by question and said, 'How did your students do on this one? … How can we make sure they get the concept of federalism?' " she said.
The collaborative effort is a far cry from when she began teaching 17 years ago, Bray-Parker said.
"I would be running down the hallway to find the other U.S. history teacher before he went to soccer practice … and saying, 'How did your kids do on the test?' "
Glenbard began increasing its early-release school improvement days at a time when Glenbard East had repeatedly failed to meet federal academic standards and was under pressure to improve.
Rodney Molek, assistant superintendent for human resources, said the early-release days have been beneficial. But when the teacher contract expires next year, he said, "I know school day will be one of the issues we discuss.
"We'll be looking at how we can support kids more during the school day, and one of the discussions is, we've got to be in school a little longer."
drado@tribune.com
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
chicagotribune.com
School days shrinking in Illinois
Most districts dip below the required 176 days
By Diane Rado, Tribune reporter
7:40 PM CDT, September 21, 2010
Advertisement
America's traditional 180-day school year is more myth than reality in Illinois, as a jumble of state laws, rules and waivers allow districts to chip away instruction time, shorten school hours and cut the number of days students come to school.
While Illinois requires 176 days of "actual pupil attendance" — already fewer than most states — the vast majority of public school districts dip below that by one or two days and sometimes more, a Tribune analysis has found.
Some 400,000 students in Chicago Public Schools attend school 170 days, with permission from state lawmakers. A similar waiver allows a suburban district to shave eight days off its calendar so teachers can work on improving student achievement when students aren't there.
What's more, the Tribune found that in many districts, a day isn't necessarily a day.
Hundreds of districts send kids home early or have them come in late — even as much as once a week — to give teachers time to get training, meet with parents or collaborate. Districts can count these shortened days toward attendance requirements.
Across the state, nearly 3,000 half-day school improvement days are scheduled this year in 622 districts. That's up about 30 percent compared with 2005, according to a Tribune review of school calendar data from 860 districts.
Not including partial days, the Tribune found that Illinois students, on average, will attend school about 171 full days this year.
"What is happening unfortunately in the United States is that we are cutting learning times for students in order to provide more time for teachers to plan. Our view is that we actually have to do both, in other words, increase time for teachers and increase time for students," said Jennifer Davis, president of the National Center on Time & Learning in Boston.
To be sure, there isn't a consensus around whether adding more school days or hours will guarantee higher achievement. Still, the Obama administration has been pushing for more learning time to help jump-start academic performance in the lowest-performing schools.
Educators say analyzing data, coordinating lesson plans and training teachers are critical to improving schools. But paying teachers for extra time for those activities is difficult to impossible given the squeeze on school budgets and the nature of labor contracts.
Instead, Illinois districts are increasing the number of partial student days in the calendar.
In Zion Elementary School District 6, students go home an hour and 10 minutes early on 34 Wednesdays to make time for school improvement planning. Overall, Zion's students get 138 days with the normal school hours.
Students in DuPage County's Glenbard Township High School District 87 are dismissed 40 minutes early on 31 Mondays, leaving 145 normal days.
The newspaper found only one district in Illinois offering 180 full days of school this year: Glenview Public School District 34.
There, the school board has made it a priority to "have as many full days and full weeks as possible," said Superintendent Gerald Hill.
A few years ago, the district floated the idea of adding early-release or late-arrival days so teachers could collaborate during regular school hours. But parents raised concerns, he said, such as, "'I'm working, and where is my child going to go?' And, 'I need to have a consistent schedule if I'm going to have sanity in my life.' "
So instead, Glenview teachers have four hours per month of professional development activities after school. During contract negotiations, salaries were adjusted to compensate teachers for that time, Hill said.
Elsewhere, districts note that they are following state rules: They're allowed to have an unlimited number of half-day school improvement days as long as their normal school day exceeds 300 minutes of instruction. That is Illinois' minimum requirement, which also lags national averages.
Any instruction more than 300 minutes each day can go toward shortening a school day in the future. The Chicago and Tinley Park districts use minutes more than 300 to reduce school days in the academic year.
The formula means families can find themselves juggling a variety of shortened schedules.
On a recent Friday in Lake Villa, parent Carrie Stargardt was picking up her third-grader at Thompson Elementary School at 2:25 p.m. — an hour earlier than normal. Students in Lake Villa School District 41 get out early on 33 Fridays.
On Mondays, Stargardt's high school daughter starts 1 1/2 hours late at Lakes Community High School. Community High School District 117 has 24 "late-start" Mondays.
Though her children love the short days, Stargardt said, she was surprised by how many there are. A recent Wisconsin transplant, she said shortened days were unusual there.
Some parents have pushed back.
In Tinley Park, District 146 got rid of half-days because parents grew disgruntled over scheduling, said Nancy Schwab, director of curriculum and staff development. In addition, the shortened days "were less productive for children; the instruction was chopped," she said.
The district got permission from the Illinois General Assembly to provide eight full days for school improvement planning, leaving 168 full school days for students.
Likewise, CPS no longer provides 10 half-day school improvement days, which were considered disruptive. The district got permission from lawmakers to provide four full days for school improvement planning, leaving 170 full days for children.
Some districts added time to the regular school day to offset the minutes lost to shortened planning days.
For example, in Zion's District 6, Superintendent John Ahlgrim said students used to be dismissed at 2:50 p.m., but the district pushed that back to 3:10 four days a week.
Overall, time in school is a complex topic, educators say, because simply adding more time may not produce better student performance, depending on a host of variables. Research findings have been mixed, with some studies showing no link between time and achievement, but with others showing a relationship.
Nevertheless, the federal government has been awarding federal grants to states willing to make major changes to turn around failing schools, including offering longer school days, weeks or years that will add more instruction time for students and more professional development time for teachers.
Likewise, the Illinois State Board of Education will be awarding grants in the coming months to districts that use strategies to improve academic performance at struggling schools, including adding more learning time.
However, the board is not pursuing mandates to lengthen the school day or year for all districts, spokeswoman Mary Fergus said, in part because of costs.
More time generally means more taxpayer money to pay teachers to work more days or stay longer at school. And to add more time, local boards would have to renegotiate labor contracts that usually lay out how many days and hours teachers can work.
Glenbard District 87 reported the lowest number of full school days — 145 — of all high school districts in Illinois. Students are released early on 31 Mondays.
Teachers there acknowledge the quandary inherent in cutting short student instruction so staff can work on school improvement.
"Clearly, we're concerned about that because student contact minutes is one of the most important things," said Erica Bray-Parker, a government and psychology teacher and a teachers union leader at Glenbard North High School. However, she said, "I really believe that the more we as a team collaborate, the higher quality my teaching will be on a day-to-day basis."
On a recent Monday, she and other social studies teachers used 45 minutes of school improvement time to scrutinize test results and see how students fared in mastering concepts taught in class.
"We went through question by question and said, 'How did your students do on this one? … How can we make sure they get the concept of federalism?' " she said.
The collaborative effort is a far cry from when she began teaching 17 years ago, Bray-Parker said.
"I would be running down the hallway to find the other U.S. history teacher before he went to soccer practice … and saying, 'How did your kids do on the test?' "
Glenbard began increasing its early-release school improvement days at a time when Glenbard East had repeatedly failed to meet federal academic standards and was under pressure to improve.
Rodney Molek, assistant superintendent for human resources, said the early-release days have been beneficial. But when the teacher contract expires next year, he said, "I know school day will be one of the issues we discuss.
"We'll be looking at how we can support kids more during the school day, and one of the discussions is, we've got to be in school a little longer."
drado@tribune.com
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune
