5 states to add classroom time in some schools

WASHINGTON - Open your notebooks, and sharpen your pencils. School for thousands of public school students is about to get quite a bit longer.

Five states announced Monday that they will add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar in some schools starting in 2013. Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Tennessee will take part in the initiative, which is intended to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive globally.

The three-year pilot program will affect almost 20,000 students in 40 schools, with long-term hopes of expanding the program to include additional schools - especially those that serve low-income communities. Schools, working in concert with districts, parents, and teachers, will decide whether to make the school day longer, add more days to the school year, or both.

All told, education officials expect to provide nearly six million more student learning hours next year.

"I'm convinced the kind of results we'll see over the next couple of years I think will compel the country to act in a very different way," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.

A mix of federal, state, and district funds will cover the costs of the expanded learning time, with the Ford Foundation and the National Center on Time & Learning also chipping in. In Massachusetts, the program builds on the state's existing expanded-learning program. In Connecticut, Gov. Dannel Malloy is hailing it as a natural outgrowth of an education-reform law the state passed in May that included about $100 million in new funding, much of it to help the neediest schools.

Spending more time in the classroom, officials said, will give students access to a more well-rounded curriculum that includes arts and music, individualized help for students who fall behind, and opportunities to reinforce critical math and science skills.

"That extra time with their teachers or within a structured setting means all the world," Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said. "It means it allows them to continue the momentum they had the day before. It means they don't slip back over the summer. It allows them to really deliver."

The project comes as educators across the United States struggle to identify the best ways to strengthen a public education system that many fear has fallen behind other nations. Student testing, teacher evaluations, charter schools, and voucher programs join longer school days on the list of reforms that have been put forward with varying degrees of success.

The report from the center, which advocates extending instruction time, cites research suggesting that students who spend more hours learning perform better. One such study, from Harvard economist Roland Fryer, argues that of all the factors affecting educational outcomes, two are the best predictors of success: intensive tutoring and adding at least 300 hours to the school calendar.

More classroom time has long been a priority for Duncan, who warned a congressional committee in May 2009 - just months after becoming education secretary - that American students were at a disadvantage compared with their peers in India and China. The same year, he suggested that schools should be open six or seven days per week and should run 11 or 12 months of the year.