Schools have been trying to move toward a more personalized approach to learning for decades, but most of them lack schedules conducive to this kind of education.

Instead, teachers are constrained within a traditional school day with six or eight periods of an inflexible length. This so-called “bell schedule” influences how we teach and even what we teach: Content coverage over deeper learning, lecturing over fluid grouping, tasks over projects and one-size-fits-all over personalized.

In a study that included almost 50,000 students in Broward County, Florida, the majority of teachers who used a non-traditional schedule reported that they implemented a variety of new teaching techniques, increased the number of learning activities, experimented with different student evaluation techniques and provided more individualized attention.

If teachers are provided with longer learning blocks during the week, they will have the space to experiment with such problems. It’s not simply about expanding the length of a class. It’s about providing educators with the flexibility to align the right amount of time when they see fit.

Technological limitations on designing master schedules that produce the time and space to experiment with a personalized approach are often overlooked in a national narrative centered on the virtues of personalized learning.

Read more about how 45-minute class periods stall learning by Lee Fleming at The Hechinger Report