Let’s be fair. District 150 board members and administrators do not claim that shortening the school day by 45 minutes is an educational benefit to students, per se. Rather, they claim that the benefits of (a) common prep periods for teachers and (b) an integrated curriculum outweigh the detriments of a cut in classroom time. They cited three studies to support this assertion at the May 5 school board meeting. Let’s take a look at them.
“On Common Ground – The Power of Professional Learning Communities” by DuFour, Eaker and DuFour
If there is anything that the research community agrees on, it is this: The right kind of continuous, structured teacher collaboration improves student learning and professional morale in virtually any setting. (p. xii) But, like Fullen and Darling-Hammond, Little (1990) found that when teachers engage regularly in authentic ‘joint work’ focused on explicit, common learning goals, their collaboration pays off richly in the form of higher quality solutions to instructional problems, increased teacher confidence and, not surprisingly, remarkable gains in achievement. (p. xiii)
These quotes are from the forward of a book that advocates for a strategy of teacher collaboration called a Professional Learning Community, or PLC. The principal authors have created a whole website devoted to this process called All Things PLC.
What is a PLC, exactly? It’s defined this way, according to the website: “Educators committed to working collaboratively in ongoing processes of collective inquiry and action research to achieve better results for the students they serve.” However, they caution, “Collaboration is a means to an end, not the end itself. In many schools, staff members are willing to collaborate on a variety of topics as long as the focus of the conversation stops at their classroom door. In a PLC, collaboration represents a systematic process in which teachers work together interdependently in order to impact their classroom practice in ways that will lead to better results for their students, for their team, and for their school.”
So, what this research is really telling us is that merely sharing prep time is not sufficient to improve student achievement. In order to really be effective — to become a true PLC — teachers must work interdependently, “engage in collective inquiry into both best practices in teaching and best practices in learning,” apply those best practices in their classrooms (which may require learning new skills), and continually assess their results (more than standardized testing), making changes/improvements as needed. In short, they have to develop a “culture of collaboration.”
Thus, the question is, does the district’s plan to provide shared prep time accomplish the benefits they imply it will by quoting DuFour’s research? Possibly. The teachers of each primary school could form PLC teams and use the new shared prep time for such effective collaboration. However, there are some reasons this might not happen.
First, the teachers’ contract lets the teachers decide how they will use their prep time; they don’t have to use the time for collaboration and the administration can’t force them. There are a number of other legitimate activities that can take place during prep times, including planning, grading papers, tutoring, meeting with parents, preparing materials, etc. Teachers may choose to use their prep time for one of those activities. Second, even if teachers do decide to “collaborate,” unless they are doing so in the way described above (and in more detail on the PLC website), there’s no evidence such cooperation will translate into higher student achievement — at least, not according to the research the school district cited. Third, having the common prep time first thing in the morning makes it a convenient time for parents to drop off their children early or seek an unannounced conference with their child’s teacher. These and other interruptions can disrupt efforts to participate in the kind of intense collaboration DuFour advocates.
The bottom line is, in order to ensure that a shared prep time results in the kind of collaboration the administration is (at least implicitly) advocating, the teachers’ contract would need to be renegotiated first. The current contract expires in 2009.
2. “Extending the School Year and Day,” by Thomas I. Ellis ERIC Digest, Number Seven.
Research data reveal, however, that the correlation between time and achievement is far slighter than expected and suggest that the quality of time spent in learning is more important than the quantity.
You can read the full article (originally published in 1984) online here. The quote used by the administration is a good summary of the article. A similar article written by Evans and Bechtel in 1997 said it best when they concluded: “The research literature indicates that time is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improving achievement.”
What these studies are saying is that just throwing more time into the school day is not in and of itself going to make students learn any more or any better. First of all, the goal should not be to simply increase allocated time (the time a student is physically present at school), but to increase the academic learning time (the time a student is engaged in learning material). Ellis further argues, however, that even increasing academic learning time only yields marginal student improvement. He concludes that “the quality of instructional time is more important than quantity.”
The district administrators contend that, based on this study, decreasing instructional time will have minimal effect on student achievement. But that’s not what this research states. It’s tempting to deduce that, since increasing instructional time does not significantly increase student achievement (what the research affirms), then the inverse must also be true. But that’s not necessarily so.
Since it’s been established that time is a necessary condition for learning, we can safely assume that there is some minimum amount of academic learning time required. Indeed, at the very least, enough time must be allocated for teachers to adequately cover federal (No Child Left Behind) and state learning requirements. Furthermore, there is always going to be some minimum amount of non-instructional time as well; things such as lunch, recess, and transition time between subjects are good and necessary components of the school day.
Research on this is available — in fact, I found it referenced by the author of the very next citation from the district. Hinde (see below) references a study done by R. J. Marzano in 2003 titled, “What works in schools: Translating research into action.” Hinde reports that Marzano “calculates that there is an average of 200 standards and 3,093 benchmarks in fourteen different content areas that teachers are expected to teach in a school year. He further estimates that teachers need approximately 15,465 hours to address the content articulated in the standards adequately.” The hours referenced are total hours spread over 13 years (Kindergarten through 12th grade). Thus, 15,465 divided by 13 years equals an average of 1,190 per year; divide that by 180 days per school year and you get 6.6 hours of instructional time per day that’s needed just to adequately meet all standards and benchmarks.
Even without the cut in the primary school day, District 150 is not providing 6.6 hours of instructional time per day currently. They provide 6.5 hours of allocated time. Take out lunch and recess and you’re already at less than six hours of instructional time per day. Cut the allocated time by 45 minutes and and actual instructional time is at or near the Illinois state minimum of five hours per day.
3. “Revisiting Curriculum Integration: A Fresh Look at an Old Idea,” by Elizabeth R. Hinde from The Social Studies (May/June 2005)
The bottom line on the research concerning the efficacy of an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum is that when skilled, knowledgeable teachers employ integrated methods, student achievement is equal to, or better than, that of students who are taught in the traditional separate-subject approach…It is clear from the research that student achievement hinges on the teacher’s ability to integrate content across disciplines effectively in meaningful ways. (p. 107)
Elizabeth Hinde is an advocate for beefing up social studies education in the elementary grades. In her article cited above, we see that she is trying to solve the dilemma of getting more social studies education into a school day that is already too short. The solution she comes up with is “to integrate social studies content with those areas that the teachers are already teaching — an integrated or interdisciplinary curriculum.”
Although this article is not about integrating music, fine art, computers, or physical education into other disciplines, I assume the district cites it because it makes general references to research on integrated curricula. In addition to the quote the district pulled out, I think it’s important to recognize the rest of the paragraph from which it was taken:
For integration to be effective, teachers must have adequate knowledge about the content areas they are integrating, and they must have adequate training in integrative techniques. Furthermore, even though integration has proven to be effective in engaging students and increasing their achievement on standardized tests and other measures of achievement, there are some caveats that teachers and curriculum developers must consider.
First, we need to assess whether the primary school teachers have “adequate knowledge about the content areas they are integrating,” namely art, music, computers, and physical education in District 150’s case. Next, we have to ask what “training in integrative techniques” the district will be offering to these teachers and what that training will cost. Finally, it must be acknowledged that there are effective and ineffective ways of curriculum integration. Hinde warns against several pitfalls including “distorting the … content in the name of integration,” “watering down the content in order to integrate by including bits of information from numerous content areas without proper depth in any of the disciplines,” and “having students participate in activities that lack educational value in any content area and busy-work exercises.”
What controls are in place or will be instituted to ensure that integration of music, arts, computers, and physical education will be effective learning experiences for the children? The district did retain “two full time equivalent specialists per school.” This will help ensure adequate knowledge of those specialists’ subject matter. Each school will have to choose which subjects for which to retain specialists, and which subjects they will have to rely on the primary school teachers to cover starting next year. No teacher training plans in these new areas or on integration techniques in general are indicated.
Final Thoughts
The premise of District 150’s actions is best stated by Board of Education President David Gorenz. Here’s what he said in an e-mail to Bill Collier, the City of Peoria and District 150 liaison:
I would readily admit that the proposal to shorten the day by 45 minutes and change the schedule originated as a means to reduce cost. However as it was studied more by administration and the Board it was felt that there were considerable benefits to the schedule change of establishing a common prep period and a more integrated curriculum. So the question that had to be answered was were the benefits of the schedule change sufficient to outweigh the loss of 45 minutes.
Judging from the research, I do not see how the schedule change outweighs the loss of 45 minutes from the primary school day. Professional Learning Communities and integrated curriculum, if done properly, can provide numerous benefits that may improve student achievement; but there doesn’t appear to be a well-defined plan to ensure those methods will be implemented consistent with the research on which they’re based. Even if they were, the loss of 45 minutes from the school day arguably would negate the gains they would produce.
Dr. Thom Simpson stated at the May 5 Board of Education meeting that “this proposal does not take time away from the teachers – the student will still spend 315 minutes [5 hours and 15 minutes] each day with the teacher.” This statement is misleading. It is true that students will spend the same amount of time with their home room teacher, but they will be losing 45 minutes of (allocated) time with a specialist in subjects such as art and music.
That is no small loss. According to the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies’ publication “Critical Evidence: How the ARTS Benefit Student Achievement,” “No Child Left Behind reaffirms the arts as a ‘core academic subject’ that all schools should teach. It puts the arts on equal footing with the other designated core subjects: English, reading or language arts, mathematics, science, foreign languages, civics and government, economics, history and geography.” The time spent learning these subjects is critical to meeting federal standards. It’s not dead time.
By eliminating the 45 minutes of specialist time, the home room teacher will have to pick up the slack by integrating as much of those subjects as possible into the 5 hours and 15 minutes of classroom time that remains — time that, as we’ve seen, is already too short for meeting all the standards and benchmarks required by federal and state laws.
A better option would be to implement PLCs and subject matter integration without shortening the school day so that the quality and efficiency of the time currently allotted can be improved. The Board of Education then would need to find another way to cut costs, but there are many other options available that would not impact student achievement.
When I picked up my Journal Star today, I found this advertisement on the front of it:
Diane Vespa, parent of two Kellar Primary School students, would like to meet with representatives of the Peoria Public Schools Board of Education to discuss her concerns about the board’s decision to shorten the school day. Here’s the shocking response she received from Board Member Debbie Wolfmeyer: