School Sucks When It's Full Of Time Sucks: Making Extended Time Count

Chronic absenteeism has nearly doubled in public schools across the country since the pandemic. Better than a quarter of students are missing 10% or more of school days. According to recent data, that number is much higher in Philadelphia – nearly 37%.  

Far from the only system with stunningly high rates of absenteeism, Philadelphia is experiencing what Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris of the New York Times described as indicating “that something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting.”

Philadelphia’s leaders are working to address this massive challenge. This summer, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker and Superintendent Tony B. Watlington, Sr., announced a robust pilot program. Twenty-five public and public charter schools are extending their school day and year. The voluntary program keeps schools open from 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. during the standard school week and for six weeks during the summer. Community organizations are expanding after-school and enrichment programming, and students have evidence-based academic support. 

It’s all great stuff and exciting.  

Kids need to be in school, and there’s plenty of need for more robust enrichment and access to out-of-school time programs. The Mayor and Superintendent are investing in significant ways to make a difference for students and have a puncher’s chance of impacting absenteeism rates. 

At the same time, we need to take a good, hard look at not just how much time kids have in school but how they spend that time.

Summer learning loss—the so-called "Summer Slide"—is real.  But so, too, is the fact that in too many schools, there are time sucks galore that take those 180-ish days in a standard school year and whittle them down to far fewer meaningful days and hours of instruction. 

I’ve visited schools around the country and seen it—it’s not just a Philly thing. It’s as small as the 30-second announcement in the middle of instruction that sets a teacher and class off course for several minutes or as big as some's tendency to treat Mondays and Fridays as days where “substantial” learning can’t occur–too close to the weekend, kids need a warm-up day, whatever. 

You see it at the start of the school year: Some teachers think they can’t focus too much on learning new content because they have to focus on building relationships first. Never mind that it’s perfectly possible to do both. Weeks of instruction time are lost.  

It shows up the days before holidays–Halloween is tomorrow, the kids won’t be able to focus–and the days when they return from a holiday break–Oh, they’re too worked up from all the time off to dig into content.

It also happens the days before the end of a semester or the school year–Their grades are already calculated and submitted. 

It occurs throughout the school day: the period before and after lunch and the last or first periods of the day.

That’s hundreds of times across the school year that meaningful instruction is intentionally not engaged in–add it up over a whole K-12 experience, and it’s a time suck that makes the summer slide look downright puny.  

The habit of giving into the myriad of time sucks sends a powerful message to students over the course of their 13 years in elementary and secondary school. The U.S. actually ranks pretty high in terms of the total number of days spent in school for students, compared to other nations, and our school days are generally longer already. 

To be clear, there’s no shortage of evidence that extended summer learning and school days can positively impact students' academic success and social-emotional well-being. But there’s also ample evidence that how the time that is created is used is the most important aspect of strengthening student learning and making school more engaging therefore reducing absenteeism.  

A restaurant doesn’t improve just by extending its hours; it has to improve the cooking and customer experience. Similarly, extending teaching and learning time can be a great intervention and enrichment opportunity so long as it’s quality teaching and learning in well-used time. 

I am not a curmudgeon, although I do take students’ achievement, teaching, and learning very seriously. Joyful, creative schools are important to the culture and, thus, learning. That takes creativity and intentionality. However, failing further and further behind one’s own God-given potential isn’t fun. It's unfunny to students, serious educators, and families. 

It’s important to keep all of that in mind as the promising pilots continue and we consider broader efforts to keep students more engaged in our city. 

Extended learning should build on solid ground, which our 180+ day school years should represent. Because the reality is that school sucks when it’s full of time sucks.