This study was designed to examine the effects of a whole school reform, the Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP), specifically designed to raise academic achievement of at-risk urban middle school students by establishing an extended school day and year, a rigorous curriculum, after-school access to teachers, and increased family-school connections.…

Violence among adolescent boys in impoverished urban areas is a major public health problem. We assessed violence-related attitudes and beliefs and exposures among 29 delinquent, 22 truant and 12 dependent of the state adolescent boys who attended an urban publicly funded extended day program. One purpose of this study was to assess violence…

Several studies have found that an inordinate amount of potential instructional time is lost in the American secondary school classroom. This paper briefly overviews the history and types of block scheduling in secondary schools and presents findings of a study that examined the perceptions of administrators and teachers in two large eastern…

A survey of 28 school districts attempted to estimate costs of adopting reforms recommended in the final report of the National Commission on Excellence in Education. Specifically examined were only those recommendations most readily quantifiable by cost. These included the suggestions that (1) salaries for the teaching profession should be…

Even though many European and Japanese students spend as many as 8 hours daily and 220 days yearly in the classroom, 661 American superintendents believe the present U.S. average--6 hours and 180 days--to be adequate, raising questions about their potential support in changing the system. (KS)

The purpose of the 1991-92 Columbus (Ohio) Public Schools Full Day Kindergarten program was to improve the level of achievement of first-grade pupils by providing an additional half-day of kindergarten experience for 952 pupils in selected schools. This extra time allowed the students to participate in activities that were designed to enhance…

Using data from a nationwide random sample for the 1976-1977 school year, this article studies effects of increasing the amount of math and reading instruction offered to third through sixth graders. All racial groups studied experienced diminishing returns at the observed amounts of instruction during the extended school day. Included are 3…

This study was conducted to investigate teacher attitudes with respect to changing to a year-round school program. The hypothesis was that a majority of teachers would be opposed to changing the traditional 180 day schedule to a year-round schedule. The population in this study consisted of all the classroom teachers in a rural county of North…

The major purpose of this study was to present some findings relative to the benefits and the effectiveness of total learning in a full-day-kindergarten program as compared to the traditional half-day kindergarten program. To do this the Evansville-Vanderburgh School Corporation of Indiana, implemented and conducted a full-day kindergarten pilot…

This report evaluates an experimental trimester plan adopted by a Birmingham (Alabama) high school during the 1976-77 school year. The Birmingham trimester plan maintained the usual length school year, simply dividing it into three "mesters," rather than the traditional two. The plan also lengthened each class period to 85 minutes, so…

The school dropout problem in states that have a high percentage of at-risk students is analyzed, with special attention to Black and Hispanic students. Emphasis is placed on the probable effects of policies dealing with increased academic standards, the extended school day, and the extended school year. (JD)

After-school programs have grown rapidly in recent years, spurred by rising employment rates of mothers, pressure to increase academic achievement, and concerns about risks to children who are unsupervised during after-school hours. The percentage of public schools offering "extended day" programs (which include before- and after-school programs)…

Findings of a study that investigated the impact of a 4-day school week in an Idaho suburban school district (Shelley School District) are presented in this paper. Data were derived from: (1) surveys of all district stakeholders, which included 2,039 K-12 students, 492 parents, 103 teachers, and 85 support staff; (2) a comparison of…

Extended-day education programs may serve a variety of purposes for children and their parents, from providing a safe recreation environment to academic enrichment, but the most often-cited purpose of these programs is providing adult supervision of children. The increased labor force participation of mothers with young children--married or…

Provides background and reviews research for "time-on-task" oriented approaches to instructional effectiveness. Following an examination of four possible approaches to increasing a student's active learning time, the author cautions that the relationship of time to learning is a complex one involving a number of variables. (JBM)