Expanded Learning Time for DLLs: Benefits, Costs and Caveats

Learning a language takes take time. To master English, dual language learners (DLLs) need an abundance of opportunities to practice reading, writing, speaking and listening to the myriad of new words they encounter at school. Given this basic, critical role of time in language acquisition, some policymakers wonder if schools trying to better serve DLLs should try to find more of this scarcest of resources. Specifically, they are considering whether these students particularly benefit from initiatives that extend learning time beyond the conventional American dose of 180, 6.5-hour days. ((Incidentally, Pew researchers conclude overall U.S. instructional time is “not really” less than most other developed countries “though it’s hard to say for sure.” See here also.))

A new report released by the National Center on Time and Learning (NCTL), Giving English Language Learners the Time They Need to Succeed, highlights three schools  — each with student populations that are majority Latino and include significant percentages of DLLs — that expanded learning time and saw increases in academic achievement.  

Notably, state action or policy prompted each of the three schools’ changes. In Revere, MA, leaders at Hill Elementary School adjusted the schedule after winning a state grant under the Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time Initiative in 2013. Guilmette Elementary in Lawrence, MA — the poorest city in the state — extended its day after the Massachusetts Board of Education placed the district into state receivership two years ago due to its perennially low academic achievement. Godsman Elementary School in Denver, CO gained flexibility from some state regulations as an “innovation school."

The schools didn't just use the extra time to run more of their existing DLL programming. Rather, they took the substantially longer schedule as an opportunity to redesign their overall approach to supporting DLLs. Strategies coalesced around similar themes:

• With the extra time, the schools built in an academic intervention block for small group instruction. These blocks had different names — AIM (Achieving Instructional Mastery), D block (D for differentiation), and the Learning Lab — but all were designed to provide targeted instruction to groups of students with similar needs.
• Schools increased time for teacher collaboration, planning and data analysis. For instance, at Hill Elementary, teachers now meet daily for a grade-level, collaborative planning period.
• Hill and Guilmette schools added new DLL specialist positions. At Hill Elementary, because of the beefed up number of DLL staff and extra time in the day, lower-performing DLLs can work with their DLL teacher up to three times a day, for a total of almost two hours. This occurs in “push-in” settings (alongside a mainstream teacher) and/or “pull-out” (outside of mainstream classrooms). At Guilmette Elementary, the principal created a new schoolwide DLL coach position to model effective practices for DLLs and provide guidance to all teachers.
• Hill and Godsman used extra time to launch and better accommodate dual language tracks, a two-way dual immersion and developmental bilingual education model, respectively. (See here for more on differences in instructional models.)

To that end, the report cites another NCTL paper that acknowledges that "time is a resource which must be used well and in concert with a continuous focus on quality implementation to realize its full potential." After all, whenever leaders add more time to the school day, they need to be sure to add more support for teachers: more curriculum, materials, and lesson prep time. As with the regular school day, if educators don't have those pieces in place, it will be challenging to take advantage of any additional instructional time.

So, it may make more sense for education leaders to start with first things first: focus on making sure the regular school day is maximally effective. If the core of a school’s instructional approach is "broken," fixes should start there, rather than adding extra time to an ineffective model. (Note: See this useful report from WestEd for more on this.)

In fact, many of the schools’ new ideas for their extended days — adding new DLL specialists, small groups, dual-language —  were matters of quality that did not necessarily require extra time. These lessons could just as readily be applied to traditional school days, albeit in smaller doses. On one hand, having more time for these approaches may be the key to the three schools’ success. But since many of these shifts happened concurrently with the time extension — in ways that may stem from a longer day but not entirely — it is difficult to decipher if the improving scores were due to increased time in the day or to the rethinking and enhancing of overall instructional quality.  Consider: some of these strategies (creating language coaching positions for teachers and forming intervention blocks for students) proved enormously effective for Portland’s David Douglas District without extending learning time, as my colleagues highlighted in a recent paper. Therefore, it is at least possible that major shifts in instructional quality — implemented without increasing time — could have produced similarly successful results.

In short, it’s difficult to draw clear conclusions from the data. This may be par for the course: a systematic review of 15 empirical studies from 1985 to 2009 revealed that research “designs are generally weak for making causal inferences” about the effect of extending the school day or year. However, notably, positive effects were present in the strongest research designs and especially when “considerations are made [by schools] for how time is used” (i.e. provisions for quality).

Even if school time matters matters uniquely and independently, the question remains if it is worth the sizable costs. In 2011, Center for American Progress’ Isabel Owen estimated that school budgets would need to rise by 6 to 20 percent, depend on the staffing model, to provide 300 extra hours in learning time. “There's no sugarcoating the fact that it takes resources,” she told Scholastic Administrator. Similarly, Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, extolled extended learning as a “key strategy” but noted that it “run[s] into an economic reality that's going to make it difficult to happen."

Along with financial considerations, there is also the psychological toll that extended learning can take on staff and students. In fact, last month, New York City’s prominent Success Academy Charter Schools network announced it would be cutting time from its extended school day because, according to CEO Eva Moskowitz, it is “challenging for staff to find enough personal time to recharge and be at their professional best." Extra-long days can contribute to teacher burnout, leading to high employee turnover and dissatisfaction.  

So, taken all together, high-quality extended learning has potential to produce results. But adding time is no substitute for improving instruction, and extra minutes always carry material and psychological price tags. What, then, could extended learning look like at its best?

• Keep “quality” at the forefront. Quantity of instruction is no substitute. For reasons discussed above, added school time must be supported by resources and planning.
• Let schools choose to participate. As the Center for American Progress (CAP) and NCTL stipulate in their expanded learning time guiding principles, “schools should opt to participate, rather than be forced” to participate. This is more likely to create buy-in for implementation. School-level leaders can determine if they can withstand the costs (financial and psychological) and they pull back if need be (like Success Academy is).
• Consider academic afterschool programming. By some definitions, afterschool is technically not “expanded learning time” but it can function similarly — if not better. By the end of the day, teachers and students are worn out. So, some schools partner with outside organizations to bring a fresh infusion of resourcing and human capital. Lakeland Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City, a school with a substantial DLL population (and where I previously taught), employed this strategy. To deepen DLL learning beyond school hours, Lakeland partnered with the University of Maryland - Baltimore County’s Young Explorers program and Education Based Latino Outreach (EBLO). Alternatively, a successful afterschool program for DLLs in California’s Salida Union School District did not partner with other organizations, but made “a point to hire only part-time credentialed teachers... instead of relying on teachers who have been in the classroom all day, to ensure that teachers [brought] the necessary energy and drive to the program.”

Click here to read the new report.

—This post is part of New America’s Dual Language Learner National Work Group. Click here for more information on this team’s work. To subscribe to the biweekly newsletter, click here, enter your contact information, and select “Education Policy.”