09.23.08

Under enormous pressure to prepare students for a successful future—and fearful that standard school hours don’t offer enough time to do so—educators, policymakers, and community activists are adding more learning time to children’s lives.

Twenty-five years ago, the still-resonant report A Nation at Risk urged schools to add more time—an hour to the usual six-hour day and 20 to 40 days to the typical 180-day year—to ward off a “rising tide of mediocrity” in American education. Today, in city agencies and school district offices, at statehouses and on the national stage, leaders are engaged in a renewed effort to do just that.

Adding learning time takes many forms. It can mean freeing students from the clock by letting them complete assignments on a computer, in their pajamas, at 2 a.m., or letting them take five years to finish high school, as the Boston district allows. It can mean forging better links between children’s schools and the many learning experiences in their cities, as Providence, R.I., has done, by building “afterzones” of networked after-school programs for its middle-schoolers, from sports and fashion design to college guidance counseling, and providing the wheels to get them there.

Most often, retooling time means extending the school day or school year to accommodate the burgeoning list of skills and areas of knowledge students need to thrive as adults.