Local districts can benefit from a collaborative process for refreshing their master schedules to increase teacher planning time. Alongside national models for organizing the school day, local districts must account for regional factors such as resources, historical practices, community expectations, changing state requirements, negotiated…

Later school start times have emerged as a potential policy to improve the sleep and educational outcomes of teenagers. This study uses a quasi-experimental comparative interrupted time series approach to examine a 90-min delay in start times in an urban district in North Carolina. Results show that the later start time resulted in more sleep for…

This study investigates the effects of different high school scheduling practices on student achievement in Mississippi, considering school economic status as a covariate. Using a robust factorial ANOVA design, the research analyzes reading proficiency, math proficiency, and Mississippi Statewide Accountability System school performance scores…

This quantitative study tested a relationship between the bell schedule models used in Oregon high schools, and mean graduation rates during the school years 2017-2020. One-hundred fourteen public high schools in Oregon with adjusted cohorts of at least 100 students were examined. Bell schedules were categorized by the day/meet pattern as seven…

As women increasingly entered the labor force throughout the late 20th century, the challenges of balancing work and family came to the forefront. We leverage pronounced changes in the availability of public schooling for young children--through duration expansions to the kindergarten day--to better understand mothers' and families' constraints.…

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,…

Motivated by potential financial savings, 4-day school weeks have proliferated across the United States in recent years, reaching public schools in 24 states as of 2019. The consequences of the 4-day school week for students, schools, and communities are largely unknown. This article uses district-level panel data from Oklahoma and a…

Ample evidence documents rising student obesity in summer months and falling student obesity during the school year. One theory for this pattern is that out-of-school days lack some of the structure and health-promoting behaviors that schools provide. Given this observed seasonal pattern, a natural question is whether there is room for policies…

In Texas, the adoption of a four-day school week (4dsw) calendar from a five-day school week (5dsw) has not been widespread until recent years, but has grown significantly to 40 districts post-COVID through the 2022-23 school year. This report presents findings of an analysis of State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR®) performance…

Policymakers have renewed calls for expanding instructional time in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We establish a set of empirical facts about time in school, synthesize the literature on the causal effects of instructional time, and conduct a case study of time use in an urban district. On average, instructional time in U.S. public schools is…

The Innovation Schools Act of 2008, § 22-32.5-102, et seq. C.R.S., was designed to provide a pathway for schools and districts to develop and implement innovative practices in a wide variety of areas and contexts to improve student outcomes. The Act provides a formal process that allows schools or groups of schools to make requests to their local…

Montessori teachers in public schools navigate a system daily that often does not align with their pedagogy, and district policies push them to stray from high-fidelity implementation. Using Weick's sensemaking theory and literature on Montessori teacher identity, I contend that Montessori teachers' identity plays a crucial role in how, or if,…

While research supports later start times for secondary schools, there is little evidence regarding start times for elementary schools. We address this gap with a statewide examination of elementary schools and a quasi-experimental analysis of an urban district that recently changed its elementary start times. We find that earlier start times…

In this paper, we examine the fundamental and complex role that time plays in the learning process. We begin by developing a conceptual framework to elucidate the multiple obstacles schools face in converting allocated time into learning time. We then synthesize the causal research and document a clear positive effect of time on student…

This explanatory sequential mixed methods study examined the extent of high school principals' instructional leadership (IL) support regarding world languages (WL) programs in Florida in 2022. Research on WL programs in K-12th and IL asserts that administrators neglect WL programs. In the first phase, a Principal's Instructional Management Rating…