A new national study provides some of the strongest evidence to date to support what many educators and parents of young children already believe, children learn more in full-day kindergarten programs than they do in half-day programs. The findings are based on federal data from a nationally representative sample of 8,000 children in public…

There are only a handful of formal studies that examined the impact of changes in school starting time on student learning and behavior. The Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of Minnesota is a leader in this research and identified the impact of changes in school starting times across the school,…

The Martin Luther King School in Boston and nine other Massachusetts public schools used a grant from the Massachusetts Department of Education to expand their school days by at least two hours. Each school lengthened the time students spent in reading and math instruction. Farbman focuses on the Martin Luther King School's foray into an extended…

Increasing the amount of time students spend in school does not necessarily improve learning. Article questions the quality and organization of classroom instruction, suggesting that these should be evaluated first. (RB)

This paper provides an overview of the 4-day school week being utilized by 36 school districts in Colorado. These districts, which tend to be rural and sparsely populated, schedule 7.5 hours per day for 144 days of school instead of the normal 6 hours for 180 days. Colorado law requires school districts to schedule 1,080 hours per year of…

Discusses the need for day care for school-age children, indicates what other countries have done to meet after-school day care needs, describes program implementation efforts in the United States, and points out benefits of extended day programs. (RH)

Describes development of a before-and-after-school extended day program for a magnet school. (RH)

Massachusetts is heralded nationally for being the first in the nation to enact a state policy to redesign and expand the learning day for all students to advance academic achievement, broaden enrichment opportunities, and improve instruction. The Expanded Learning Time (ELT) Initiative has gained momentum over the past several years due to the…

Too many students are falling through the cracks of our educational system and dropping out of school. A program called Extended-Day School (EDS) was implemented in Franklin County, Tennessee, to help high school students with specific subjects. EDS sought to deal with several problems of at-risk students: fewer study aids, little parent…

This paper provides guidlines for formally evaluating extended-day programs. Extended-day programs are defined as those attended before and after school by children between the ages of 5 and 14. A seven step evaluation process, in which the practitioner responsible for program administration plays a key role, is outlined and discussed. (Author/RH)

Surveyed principals and superintendents in South Dakota to elicit opinions about a longer school year or longer school days. One-half of the respondents oppose increasing the amount of time that students spend in schools. Of those who favor adding more time, increasing the number of days would be the preferred way. (KS)

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…

Attempting to respond to differing community opinions about an all-day kindergarten in a period of budget problems, Superintendent Robert L. Zorn helped institute a program in which the afternoon session was optional, to be supported by a $100 "lab fee." (JM)