Chris Gabrieli

The problem with the current system

I think the main problem with the current system is it's literally just not enough time to get done what we want. For many students that means, particularly students from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds, not enough time to get simple math and English and reading skills that they need to succeed.

We have less history, less science, less social studies then we used to have, less time for sports and music and so forth.

There's not enough time to have a well-rounded education and it's not enough time for teachers to not only do their classroom work, but to work with each other and develop their skills further.

The benefit of more time

So many schools that we document in the book, take students who come from backgrounds where their achievements often have been poor and specifically, already has been poor in up to the grades they've been through. And then by using more time, are able to really significantly raise, as measured by test scores, how those students do in English and math.

To give these students who in many cases don't ever have arts or music or drama or sports in their life, a dose of that that everyday, to see teachers say, hey has transformed how I teach and I'm focusing on students and schools, but this also has a lot of implications for parents and neighborhoods and we put that in the subtitle of the book because although we're in it because of the educational benefit.

The truth is for working parents in today's world where most moms do work, it is the old days, the earlier dismissal was perhaps easier for families to handle, today there's no one at home. It is much better for parents to know that their students, their children are in a good, safe, you know, place engaged in good activities.

The new school day

The new school day is as we envision it and a number of schools have implemented it, is about two hours a day longer. So taking a school day from about six hours to about eight hours, roughly matching the day of students' parents. And what happens though in that added time is what's key.

All the schools we profiled, they reinvent the whole day, they don't take last year's schedule and add two hours, they redesign a whole day and they look at what they want to do.

And they say okay, how could we do more and better on our literacy efforts? We've profiled the high end school in Worcester, for example, in the book, that has created a two hour sacrosanct block in the morning so that they can really get every student deeply into literacy exercises.

And it means not more lecturing by the teacher, but for example, more individualized instruction. The time to talk each student through a challenge. I was at a book talk today and I read a section of the book where students are talking with enthusiasm about luscious language, these are first graders in a very poor community in Worcester, talking about luscious language and explaining how their teacher has taught them that if you put a strong adjective or a strong metaphor in, you know it's more powerful.

So at the end I think a girl talks about, you know, fall- getting out of bed and crawling like a snail. And you know at that moment you realize the teacher's time to be able to do that and help that student to begin to see the beauty of language, is you know, really exciting education moment.

Typical new school day

One of the things we advocate for from a policy point of view is, flexibility at the school level, let the teachers and the principal figure out what's right for their students, which is not going to be the same everywhere.

But what you typically see at a new a new day school is, you typically see more time on the core subjects, math and English. You see time enough to have some science and some history and some world languages and cultures. You see time for enrichment in arts, music, drama, sports things that kids love to do and that will get them excited about schools and in some case have some real educational content like a debate society or a dramatic production where there's a lot of literacy in there as well.

You also see time for physical activity, I mentioned sports but let's make that broader at a time when we see so many kids slipping into early obesity, to have time in the day where kid can get some physical activity, those who are going to be aggressive and proficient at sports, great, for the rest you know whatever they enjoy doing, but moving around.

We all some need some pacing in the day and so do kids. So, you see a variety of well-rounded approach as well as the ability to go deep in the subjects. You see some of the work that's called homework now being done during the school day. Kids go home with significantly less homework.

And the last piece that's added to the day, I'm covering a lot of waterfront here, but many schools add some of what they call social/emotional learning or character learning where there's time for the school to work with students, particularly students who often come from difficult circumstances, to deal with conflict resolution, to deal with their own frustration.

Examples of converted schools

The biggest group of schools that have tried it already are charter schools. There are more then 1000 of them around the country that have done it. One example that people hear a lot about and we cite in the book and visit is one is called KIPP Schools, there's 57 of them, I think it's now maybe up to 62, but when we wrote the book there were 57 of them.

Mostly middle schools but there are some elementary and high schools now. You know they have extraordinary performance, looking at sort of an ultimate measure of the 1000 students who have gone through KIPP schools and then gone through high school and graduated, 80 percent have gone onto college, now this is from a demographic that's 90 percent minority, 80 percent poor enough to qualify for a free lunch.

And whom the typical average is 20 percent, going onto college. If you look at test score measures, they're off the map. Here in Washington, DC they have an Academy for example, I think it's called the KIPP Key Academy.

It has three times the proficiency rate in 8th grade in math and two and a half times the proficiency rate in English, of the rest of the District. So you know those are extraordinary. In Maryland nearby in Baltimore, there's a school, Ujima Village School it's called I believe, that's not only the highest performing middle school in Baltimore, it has the highest math scores in Maryland.

It beats the suburban schools in math with again, a very challenging demographic. So you know, those are examples that we go in the book, it's not just KIPP though, we go in the book to a Roxbury Prep Charter School in Boston, which has just extraordinary performances and like Ujima Village, is the single highest 8th grade math scoring school in Massachusetts which happens to be the highest scoring math state in the country.

So it beats Wellesley and Weston and Wayland in very posh suburbs, beats Boston Latin the legendary, you know, exam school. So charter schools are the biggest group and provide a lot of evidence. The schools in Massachusetts which I personally have been involved in helping convert from standard district schools to expanded day, expanded learning time schools or new day schools, I think there's now 18.

And in many ways, more important for the policy debate because there's a limit to how many charter schools you can have. The real question is, can we help, can we use this in standard schools and the results there too have been very exciting.

Signs of improvement

In Massachusetts in the first year, what was striking was that all 10 schools that converted, which were standard district schools that were consistently low-performing, they were consistently well below the state averages.

They had a significant achievement gap. They were not, you know, special charter schools or magnet schools or any of the things that people think of as different types of schools. All of them gained significantly and faster then the state in the first year. Not all of them gained the same amount, but they all gained more then the state.

And the overall gains were quite impressive. So I think one of the things that taught me was, at least for those- you know first pioneering examples, the teachers in that school had the capacity to be more effective with students already, with they were given more time.

And it was most powerful in literacy interestingly where the achievement gap of these 10 schools was reduced by 35 percent in the first year. These schools have consistently trailed the state year after year by more then 20 points in proficiency and they narrowed that to 13 in the first year.

So I do think that there are teachers in schools right now, in public schools and principals who are ready, willing and able to do better if they have more time.

Project-based learning

Across our ten schools in Massachusetts in the first year, we surveyed teachers and about two-thirds said that they were able to do more experiential, project-based learning. So they were able to do more individualized instruction, differentiated instruction.

And about a little fewer, but over 60 percent said they could do small group and peer-to-peer learning. Now those are all ideas people have about how to get students more engaged, how to you know individualize instruction more and so on. And those teachers found that with more time, they knew they should do this, they could now get at it.

Conversion process

We believe that it's crucial from our experience that the schools take a year to plan. That the teachers and the principal take great ownership of the plan. We think one of the reasons it's succeeding is, the more time enables a lot of things, but the design of it, the empowerment of the teachers and the school to think about what are we doing well, what are we doing poorly, what are we not doing at all?

How could we do things differently, what should the pace of the day be like? When should kids have some time to blow off some steam, when should teachers have some time to work together?

So that's something we would counsel anybody else looking at this not to impose this from the top down, not to have the superintendent of schools or a principal say, here's the exact plan I'm going to make everybody in the building do what I think is right.

So getting teachers involved in deciding how to use more time to succeed more in students and adjusting it the second year or even the second month, those are all I think part of the kind of educational system we need to succeed.

Teaching in shifts

You know teachers are the linchpin, I mean all of this comes down to what happens in that classroom when the teacher is teaching and a student hopefully is learning. Everything else is, you know, a framework around that key moment. You know our experience so far is the teachers have found this workable.

They do find it a bit more challenging. One thing that is true is that not every teacher has to stay all those hours in order to have every student stay all those hours. So teachers have can have staggered start times and stop times. In New York City there's a new school being operated actually by the Teachers Union, as a charter school.

They're using more time and they way they're doing it is they have literally two shifts, so no teacher is working longer then the normal shift. They have two overlapping shifts.

I think it's a mistake to have teachers having a whole lot more classroom time. The goal of this isn't to have teacher sitting, you know, standing in front of students and students sitting in desk and that sort of standard lecture position.

That's probably the least productive use of more time, the goal of this is to get students engaged in learning, to get students moving and doing things beyond the normal day, to allow more one-on-one tutoring or small group tutoring, all the kinds of things that we know- individualize education and make it more engaging.

A catalyst for innovation

At its best case, it's really a stimulus and a catalyst for innovation. It's a moment where a school can say, you know, we're a standard school that's been around for a long time, it's got a lot of people who have been in the same places for awhile to say, you know, let's take a time out and ask ourselves how do we change and improve?

And I find most schools do want to do that, they don't necessarily know how to do that and they don't get any new tools you know with which to do it. So, I call it the 29 year teacher benchmark because you've sat down one day and (unint.) Massachusetts next to a teacher and they said, you know, this is my 29th year of teaching, it's my best year.

I now am teaching in a totally different way because I have the time to do it. And I could never go back. And I say to public education leadership people, if you want innovation that's going to help change American education broadly, it's got to work for that 29 year veteran teacher, not just for the next generation of teachers, but the person already in place.

Improving literacy

I was thrilled that in the first year in Massachusetts we saw, with these conversion schools, the biggest gains in literacy and I think that many of the schools profiled in the book are putting a lot of energy into literacy because I think almost everyone in education realizes that as important as math is, as important as knowledge of the world and so forth are, reading is the baseline skill to succeed in life.

And from there you can, you can go anywhere in terms of what you can learn. And we know that literacy, the problem is very serious in our schools and across the board, but particularly for poorer students and disadvantaged students.

And we do know sadly that very few students of any background do a whole lot of reading outside of school. Maybe they never did, but in this day and age with Internet competition and video games and you know TV, it's harder then ever.

So having the time in the day to intervene at the phonics level for kids who really need that, to make sure every kid is actually reading independently, to let kids read in small groups, to do guided group reading and so forth, you know, allows teachers to take every tool they have and take a shot at helping kids succeed in reading.

And I think the results have been, you know, really quite impressive in terms of the gains students are making, especially at those elementary and middle school years where, you know, that skill has to get acquired.

Providing more structure

If you look at art programs, music programs, piano lessons, you name it, the upper middle class is buying a whole lot of learning and education in a… across a broad spectrum, core academic and enrichment, for their children. And those kids probably are over-scheduled.

And if you talk to the dean of admissions at Harvard, he would say to the parents, chill out, you know, let people you know grow, maybe take a year off after high school. I think if you go to, you know, many of the schools that we're involved in right now and that many of these charter schools are in, kids have no options outside of the day.

They don't have a parent who's you know in a position to do that whether they're overwhelmed by work or they're often a single parent; they don't have the resources, you know, may not be in a personal position to do much about it. So those students are doing very little outside the day.

For them a little more structure in life is clearly a total positive and we have a video we show folks who want to get a feeling what this is like from our own experience in Massachusetts and student after student says, you know, if I wasn't here, I'd be doing nothing and I, you know, feel safer and more engaged and happier in having this opportunity.

So I think long-term the question of whether school time ought to also be longer for middle class and upper class kids is really a question for middle class parents. Do you want school to provide a wider, broader education for your kids and do less of that driving around and buying services?

Or do you say, you know what, I want to buy half my education for my kids and get the rest from the public schools? And I don't think middle school parents, middle class parents, frankly have decided. For kids at risk, for high poverty communities you know, I think it is at this point, a travesty if we don't give kids, you know, the eight hours a day that give them the opportunity to succeed that the data already shows us a new school day allows.

The effect on working parents

There are relatively few families in America where, you know, mom's home with cookies in the oven and, you know, a fun project to do at the kitchen table, that's kind of in the "Ozzie and Harriet" past. And so the reality is, for most working families, that two o'clock, three o'clock, end of the school day is actually a big problem.

So, I think that for parents knowing their child is in a good place, doing productive things, fully engaged, expanding their learning, getting the kind of experiences every kid should get in arts and so forth in the afternoons, is a heaven sent.

And the parents in Massachusetts who've experienced a conversion from the old school day to the new school day, are wildly, strongly in support of it. So you know I do think it is important. It's not the reason to do it societally, the reason to do is not the parent benefits, it's the children's benefits, but it's a nice extra.

From the community point of view, the neighborhood point of view and the reality is, all the public health prevention data tell us, putting teens in particular on the street at two o'clock in the afternoon, is a bad idea. Juvenile crime today, to take the worst piece of it, triples between two o'clock and six o'clock, on weekdays only.

No change on Saturdays or Sundays, weekdays. It's pretty obvious why, students are unattended, that's both crime by and crime on them. Same kind of data for alcohol, for smoking, for teenage pregnancy, for all of the things we want to keep kids away from. So, you know from a from a kid's point of view, that's a good idea.

The effect on extracurriculars

There's still plenty of time for extracurricular activities. You know students are getting out of the typical new day school at about four o'clock in the afternoon and you know, usually going home with somewhat less homework because they've done more it, that kind of work, during the day.

So you know is there time still to take a specialized music lesson or, you know, ice skating which a parent in Greenfield, Massachusetts was particularly adamant, had to (unint.) survive. And I came back a year later, they were very skeptical. And not only was their still ice skating lessons, their daughter in fact was the national junior champion.

So, you know it's important for families to be able to do that, to get Hebrew school or to get, you know, Catholic education or you know, whatever it is that families want kids to get, not to mention family time in the evening. There's plenty of time for those, all the weekends, there is a long summer, there's vacations. This does not impinge on traditional extracurricular activities.

Cost of implementing the new school day

So&133; and it's usually about pro rata to the amount of time more. So we find generally about 10 to 15 percent more money is the cost, to get about 25 to 30 percent more time. So that's maybe $1000 to $1500. In Massachusetts we're paying about $1300 per student per year to get about two hours to a day more.

So, where does that come from and should we do this? You know, it's a good question. What we've done in Massachusetts is advocate for the state to fund this as a program that schools can compete for- if they want to try to- try this out and that has been a pretty effective way, the money's grown pretty quickly for it.

But it's still a tiny amount of total spending. And I think what people want right now are solutions, I mean the reality is we've more then doubled in real dollars, spending on education in America over the last 25 years. And I think, you know, an honest review of the NAEP data says, we've gotten relatively little for it, an educational kind of bang for our buck.

That's not to point a finger, it's just, you know, be honest about the data. So I think right now there's a hunger for ways to spend money that, you know, supports schools, support teachers, support student learning, but have clear outcomes. So you know, most places I've found where we discuss this, people are pretty receptive.

They're saying, yeah, I'd be willing to try a pilot program to see if some schools could do this and succeed and if they do succeed, you know, to expand it quickly because we need to get at the problems of why are we stuck in the rut we are. And I don't like to be negative, but I think at the beginning part of the book we look at what a rut we're stuck in, as a country.

And if you look at NAEP data, if you look at adult literacy levels, if you look at, you know, dropout rates in addition to proficiency rates, if you compare us increasingly to the rest of the world. I mean one thing that really stood out to me is Americans over 35 are of the highest percentage of college educated- highest rate of having gone to college of any country in the world.

Under 35, we're number seven. The change is not so much that we've lost any ground, there are a lot of other countries that have figured out that what we did in the 20th century, educate our own people and see the good things that come from it, they're doing. And they're doing it with you know much more strategic drive then we as America do.

And in many cases because those countries have a federal education system that can make a decision like that. So, you know, I think the moment has come where we have to decide whether we're going to invest in things that can work or just keep spending a little more, you know, on the system as it is.

No easy change

Change is hard. This idea of a longer school day and more school time has been bandied about for at least 25 years, it was one of the five basic ideas in "The Nation at Risk" the report that kind of launched the modern education reform movement 25 years ago.

So you know there's nothing original in the idea, it's been hard to get people to change. It's hard to change the bus schedule, it's hard to change parents' expectations, it's hard to change, you know, teachers' habits. It's hard to even change students' habits.

And it's hard to get the nerve to try to do all of that at once, in two months you know, between the end of one school year and the beginning of the next which is why until recently, almost all the schools that have changed the schedule, have been start-up schools that started with a different schedule.

There's no secret solution to that other then I think challenging the people who run schools, the teachers and the principal, to take the time to come up with it. My non-profit organization does the technical assistance and coaching in Massachusetts to schools.

And we don't have to do a lot but we find that giving them supports, giving them some ability to see what other schools are doing, giving them some information about kind of best practices, they're avid users of that. But they need that transitional help, to get over the line from their old habits of the old school day, you know, to successful habits for new school day.

Changing public policy

In order to do this, somebody has to decide you know to both finance it and sort of make it possible in our public education kind of governance system. That could happen at not really the school level, very few schools in America have the autonomy to change their own schedule.

But it could happen at the district level, and there are some district efforts going on, New York's doing some significant things. Miami, we profile in the book, has something called the school improvement zone where 39 schools have an hour a day longer because the district decided that would be a good idea.

So it can happen at the district level, we think the most powerful level it could happen is at the state level, where the state who's accountable now under No Child Left Behind and just under societal expectation, you know is accountable for whether the districts and schools in their state are achieving well.

But you need a public policy arm of an effort to convince somebody to do this. It's not enough to convince teachers they should want this or principals, they need the authority and the money to do it. So that's one kind of arm and the book goes into quite a bit of detail of what we've learned from our work in Massachusetts and general observation about what it takes to get a constituency behind that.

We believe that Massachusetts is not the only place in the country where this could gain a lot of traction fast. And there are some other states New Mexico, particularly and prominently, New York State to a meaningful degree and some others, Oklahoma recently, that are starting to make some real progress, Delaware at looking at this on their own.

Then you've got to decide if you even had this program in place, you know, how do you help schools do that? And as an organization, we try to provide that technical assistance. We're not covetous of it, there are others probably who could do it and we try to put all of it online, so we have a rapidly growing kind of knowledge center we call it.

And it's based on videotaping a lot in schools and showing- so the people could look up, how do you do partnerships with community organizations to bring in, you know, some interesting talent from outside to enliven regular classes and do enrichment? What do you do in math, you know, at the elementary and middle level?

What do you do in literacy and reading, you know, what's the deal with teachers and their unions about compensation and making this voluntary?

The effect on teachers

Response from teachers unions has been very positive. In Massachusetts where I personally worked on this, both the Massachusetts teachers association which is the NEA affiliate and the American Federation of Teachers affiliate are strong supporters. They've lobbied for more money on Beacon Hill, they fight for it, side-by-side with us because they've seen it succeed.

And if their teachers tell them, this is working, you know we need to do more of it. At the national level, there is a proposal in Congress by Senator Kennedy and Congressman Miller to have a national demonstration project so other states could follow this model and the National Education Association, NEA, endorses that proposal.

We hope AFT, you know, will soon. Teachers unions are you know supportive of this because they see this as a teacher centric strategy. They see this as something allowing teachers to do their job better and as long as the teachers are fairly dealt with on this, meaning they get paid some for it and you know you deal with the fact that for some teachers, they may not be able to do the extra time.

They may have an ailing parent or a child or another, you know, interest in their life that has been built into their schedule and they can't necessarily do it. As long as teachers are dealt with fairly, on those issues, teachers unions are good allies. And frankly I think that's why it's a reform that matters in the big picture.

Thinking inside the box

I sometimes joke where I try to be the boldest inside the box thinker, you know, in education because you everyone's supposed to be outside the box, right? Well you know the truth is, we got a box, it's the education system we have, it's the schools we have, it's the teachers we have, it's the contracts we have, it's the bureaucracy we have.

It's the, you know, school committees we have and school boards and so on. And although all of that could use some improving, if you really want to help kids, you got to have an innovation that works in the system we have and it has the support, not the opposition, but the active support of the people who, you know, who make it happen everyday.

So I think this is important compared to some of the other ideas out there because the grassroots support this.

Three missions of the new school day

I think just broadly that you know, if the core expanded learning time is the new school day is simple and it's three missions. Give kids the time to get the core academic skills they need. Give kids a well-rounded education…

And the teachers can have the time to improve their craft. An important piece of this is more time for teachers as well, not just in the classroom, but to do common planning, to do professional development embedded in the day, to work with each other to improve their skills.

If we allow schools and teachers to have the time to do this three things, relatively simple prescription, I think we can see a true quantum jump in what happens in our schools in America and you know the benefits to students, the benefits to parents, and the benefits to communities, are just exciting to consider.

The effect on English language learners

I think that expanded learning, a new school day is a particularly important innovation and tool for English language learners for kids who come from families where English may not be spoken well or even at all at home. Almost by definition, you know, the immersion they get in English is only going to happen at school.

So more time at school means you know more exposure to English, more opportunity to gain those skills. It also means, particularly and poignantly I think, a realistic approach to homework. If a student goes home with homework and has a parent who doesn't speak English and may not have had much of an education, what help can they expect?

If a student goes home to college educated parents, is going to get, you know if anything, too much help, more then they want. I think for the English language learner student, a growing percentage of the American population, it is, I think particularly important, to get the job fully done at school, which means the time they need.

The effect on students with disabilities

For students with disabilities, you know that covers a wide range of course. But for many students who have a learning disadvantage or disability, more time is essential. In fact many such students for example have accommodations as part of their IEP's and so one of those accommodations often include a little more time.

So, you know it's ironic that you know sometimes will say, well you know how will this help or hurt those students, I mean almost by definition, those students greatest problems is the hectic pace of the current school day is inadequate for them. It's inadequate for a lot of kids who don't have an IEP, it's often, you know, most inadequate for them.

So going at a pace that allows those students to master the skills they need, to have both the opportunity to get the one-on-one support they often need but also the mainstream experience from students, you know, is particularly a powerful tool. I might add, you know, if you look at some of the students with high levels of physical disability or other disabilities, they often have no chance outside of school, to participate in anything like an extracurricular activity.

I've seen some of the most, you know, emotionally satisfying scenes, is seeing children who have really very serious disabilities, getting a chance in an expanded learning time school to actually participate in some sense, in some level, in physical activity or sports or participate in an arts program or whatever.

Many times those kids are not really eligible or welcome at an after school program or in a community site, not because those people are mean-spirited but because they don't know how to accommodate students with disabilities. So, it is particularly nice to see schools that are usually by far the best institution in our society for helping those students, think about helping them across the board.

So you know is it a panacea for every child, no. But I think if you look at special populations of students expand learn time you know, is there something in it for all of them.

The effect on gifted students

One reaction we sometimes get, well this is good for kids who are struggling. And I do think it's very good for kids who are struggling, but it's really not for my child who's doing fine or even advanced and gifted. I don't think that's true at all. We were at a school recently in Fall River, Massachusetts where the gifted and talented program is in the school.

They have expanded learning time and you know they feel that for the first time, they're able to teach so much more then beyond the test. They're able to give kids an hour a day, you know, in the computer room doing research on original projects, to send them off on kind of exploratory project-based learning activities that really engage these high achieving students and do the basic classroom activities that they must do.

A good fit for all

There's virtually every population of students for whom more time can be a tool. The key of course, as it is in everything in (unint.), is to customize it. It has to be the right time, the right kinds of things for each student.

You know you should expect I think a well-rounded, expanded learning time school to have really, at the end of the day, quite different schedule for the struggling student, for the mainstream student, for the gifted student, for the English language learner, you know for the child with a disability.

And what ultimately that's what we really need, the right education for each child.