Giving Compass' Take:

· Districts are taking steps to reconfigure the way schools use their time with students to maximize overall educational outcome and encourage collaboration and personal growth.

· What are some ways districts are changing student schedules? How are schedule changes personalizing learning? How does this affect student outcome?

· Check out this article to learn how later school start times have shown to affect student behavior and performance. 

Discovering the best way to structure the time that students and staff members spend at school is a challenge. As school leaders rethink educational spaces, a related issue is how time is used in those spaces. This is a growing area of research, and some schools have made changes, such as starting school at later times, personalizing student schedules, incorporating the use of master schedules for students, and creating fewer and longer class periods.

Some school districts employ block schedules in high school so students are taking only three or four classes a day instead of seven or eight. Other schools are experimenting with “power lunches” that build in time for self-selected enrichment opportunities or additional tutoring time.

The idea of creating innovative school schedules is not new. In a 1995 article, Robert Lynn Canady and Michael D. Rettig laid out a case for rethinking the issue. More recently, a Center for American Progress report recommended that the school day allow for more teacher preparation and collaboration. The authors note that teachers in the U.S. spend roughly 27 hours of every week in active instruction, much higher than teachers in high-performing countries, such as Finland or Singapore.

Read the full article about rethinking the way schools use time by Amelia Harper at Education Dive.