The Learning Recovery Strategy Districts Are Overlooking

As districts work toward helping students catch up, a handful of strategies have emerged as popular best practices—intensive tutoring, summer programs, and after-school opportunities among them.

But one option has been largely absent from districts’ COVID-19 recovery plans: increasing the amount of time students are in school, either by adding more days to the academic year or tacking more minutes onto the school day.

Decades of research suggest that more, well-used time in the classroom correlates with higher achievement across student demographic groups. And while it’s not clear exactly how many schools or districts have employed additional days or longer days as a COVID recovery strategy, it is clear that it has been a relatively unpopular choice, even as districts confront historic lapses in achievement.

Read the full post here.