In rural school districts across the country, four-day school weeks have proliferated. Currently adopted in 1,600 schools in 600 school districts, 90% of which are rural, four-day school week policies have prospered largely without a robust body of evidence to support their expansion. J. Cameron Anglum presents an overview of four-day school week…

Efforts to improve education outcomes often involve lengthening the school day or the school year in hopes that spending more time in school will boost student learning. Yet, as Frederick Hess explains, U.S. students spend as much or more total time in school as their peers in other industrialized nations. What matters more than the amount of time…

School leaders Lydia Cochrane and Ayesha Hoda have struggled to meet the increasingly complex needs of the students in their schools. As students' needs increase, schools are asked to do more and more, while continuing to have strong academic results. Cochrane and Hoda believe the current system is untenable and needs to change. With Linda Nathan,…

In spring 2020, schools had to swiftly shift to remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Cognia surveyed more than 74,000 students, parents, and teachers in the organization's network about their experiences with the transition. Based on their findings, Mark Elgart says that educators must be attentive to four challenges common to online…

Every year, children enter PreK and kindergarten with varied early education experiences, and the COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the problem. The need to respond to students' changing situations gives school districts and states an opportunity to reconsider how they are helping children and their families make the transition into kindergarten.…

Everybody complains about a lack of time in school, but few are prepared to do anything about it. Laying the foundation before making such a shift is essential to the success of the change. Once a broad-based team has been chosen to do the work, they can follow a process explained in four steps with the apt acronym of T.I.M.E.: Taking stock,…

At most high schools, the goal is to prepare students to make the leap to a college environment. By contrast, Philadelphia's G.W. Carver High School of Engineering and Science has decided to create an environment that mirrors the culture and expectations of college so the transition to college won't seem like a leap at all. Three changes have been…

A recent study by the University of Minnesota looked at eight high schools across the U.S. that chose later start times, from 8:00 a.m. to 8:55 a.m. The study found significant decreases in absences and tardiness as well as greater academic benefits for schools with the latest start times. Among the 9,395 students in the study, those who slept…

The 2018 PDK Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools finds that Americans trust and support teachers, but they draw the line at wanting their own children to join a profession they see as undervalued and low-paid. An overwhelming 78% of public school parents say they would support teachers in their community if they went on strike…

High school students should be able to hit the ground running when school begins, but budget uncertainties lead to schedule changes that lead to disruptions for the first several weeks of classes for most students and many teachers. In this article, the author describes the chaos that often accompanies scheduling during the first weeks of the…

How educators, school board members, taxpayers, voters, parents, and students design a school calendar, in terms of both process and product, should be a reflection of how we desire to accommodate and conform diverse faiths within our communities. If, according to Dewey, the school is a reflection of society, then what does the inability to…

To understand the effects of after-school programs, people need to understand the effects of various "dosages." The Harvard Family Research Project, an agency that devotes considerable resources to the study of after-school programs, recommends three categories for measuring dosage: (1) "intensity"; (2) "duration"; and (3) "breadth." Intensity is…

Presidential commissions, parents, academics, and employers have proposed the same solutions, again and again, for fixing the time students spend in school: (1) Add more days to the annual school calendar; (2) Change to year-round schools; (3) Add instructional time to the daily schedule; and (4) Extend the school day. Three reasons--cost,…

In this article, the author shares his views on impacts of educational rituals on students. He points out that these rituals have nothing to do with education and have a negative effect on education. He questions why teachers still practice these rituals, even if these rituals have negative impacts on students. The following rituals are discussed:…

The largest issue for schools is not extending the school day or year--as useful as those policies might be--but of meeting time requirements within the constraints of the budgets and personnel given them. Policy makers rarely understand how their policies impact practice. Author Marilyn Crawford suggests a policy-talks-to-practice strategy that…