Reasons for This Study: The Need for Additional Models While education leaders and policymakers are making steady progress in establishing new guidelines and frameworks that will promote effective science learning, most school leaders still need more information about the practical ways they can strengthen and expand science education in their own schools. Such a need is ever greater now that more schools are expanding (or seeking to expand) learning time. The U.S. Department of Education has funded roughly 1,150 schools to increase learning time as part of the School Improvement Grant (SIG) program. In states like Massachusetts and Colorado, and districts from Houston to Pittsburgh to New Orleans, there are initiatives and schools that have built in significantly more time for the express purpose of enhancing teaching and learning. Schools have expanded their schedules in order to expand learning opportunities in core academic classes and provide supplemental academic content, broaden educational offerings through enrichment programming, and strengthen instructional quality by enabling increased teacher collaboration and professional development. Moreover, there is also considerable support from the Obama Administration and among Congressional education leaders for ensuring that the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) includes resources and a policy framework for increasing learning time in high-poverty, low-performing schools across the country.22 Yet, despite this mounting drive to expand time and a deepening understanding of its many benefits, educators are only just beginning to access information about how to best leverage additional time to support student learning. Because the implementation of new standards and accountability through No Child Left Behind has focused on English and math, the field of science education is in particular need of additional research, especially as more states move to enact high standards and accountability in science. This study serves as a first attempt to fill a compelling need for more models of effective expandedtime science programming.
SCIENCE EDUCATION AND THE CALL FOR MORE TIME |
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Study Methodology For this report, NCTL chose to study five schools that have expanded their schedules with a goal of improving science instruction. We use case studies of these schools to explore the following questions: • How did additional time enable school leaders and teachers to change their approach to science instruction? What new opportunities have they found? • What results are they seeing? • Have student engagement in science and knowledge about science careers increased along with standardized test scores? • What unforeseen challenges are the schools encountering, and how are teachers and leaders dealing with them? • What recommendations do these school leaders and teachers have for other educators currently considering expanding their schedules to devote more time to science? The expanded-time schools included in this study look very different from one another. There is a mix of urban and rural schools, and they range in size from 204 to 773 students. Three are elementary schools (grades K-5), and two are middle schools (grades 6-8). Despite the range of sizes, locations, and approaches to increasing learning time, all five expanded-time schools have majority highpoverty student populations, and several have significant groups of students whose first language is not English. More importantly, students in all but one of the profiled schools have demonstrated gains in proficiency on science assessments, a key criterion we used for inclusion in the study. (The expanded-time program at the fifth school had been in operation less than one year, and thus, did not yet have state outcomes data; formative assessment data were available.) The schools examined are: