One afternoon within the next month, millions of school-age children will spill out of schoolhouse doors at the end of their last day in the 2018-19 school year. June will be a time for celebration and reflection. Another school year has been completed by all children. Another year of schooling has been achieved, by some children. Reflection will indicate that less than half the children in the United States gained a year’s growth in reading or in math. However, 90%+ of students will be either graduated or promoted to the next grade level for another school year in the fall.

In reflection, what is a school year or, put differently, what is a year of schooling?

Take Away

Instructional time is the numeric that defines a school year. Each state mandates a minimum amount of time schools are required to provide instruction for Kindergarten, elementary, and secondary school children. The number is different for each age level, recognizing that children may be required to be in Kindergarten for half days, an elementary school day includes recesses, and the high school day is still influenced by Carnegie Units, a standard that parallels a high school course to a college course.

In Wisconsin, “Each school district board shall annually schedule and hold at least 437 hours of direct pupil instruction in kindergarten, at least 1,050 hour of direct pupil instruction in grades 1 through 6, and at least 1,137 hours of direct pupil instruction in grades 7 through 12.”

https://dpi.wi.gov/cal/days-hours

Oops, short on meeting the required number of instructional hours because of winter weather! Then additional school time will be scheduled to make certain the mandated number is met. No one goes home until the magic number is reached. Even though make-up time counts as instructional time, no administrative action is taken when a student skips school on a make-up day in June. Every hour counts, but some hours are more important than others. A school year calendar is time spent in school.

An instructional year is not the same as a school year. The school year will end whether or not teaching and learning are successfully completed. Units, chapters, and lessons not yet taught due to a variety of valid reasons will not be learned. No one protests on the last day of school saying “I’m not done teaching or learning!” An instructional year is the planned scope of knowledge, skills and learner dispositions assigned to an annual grade level or subject area course. It is quality not quantity.

What Do We Know?

We want to say that student learning is what really matters. Did the children successfully learn the knowledge, skills and dispositions of their annual grade level or course curriculum? Maybe and maybe not. Instructional time is a finite number; learning is a variable fit into time.

From start to finish, a school year is comprised of the number of school days that meets the state mandate for hours of instruction, parent-teacher conferencing days, professional development days for school staff, and the sum of holidays that lie between the first and last days on the school calendar. Traditionally, schools calendared 180 days for student instruction, several days for teacher’s professional development, and a couple of days for parent-teacher meetings. If the first day is September 1, the last day is in or after the first week of June. When school districts publish their school calendars, school families and communities arrange their annual schedules around the school calendar. There is an expectation, if not a promise, that school will be in session on the days of the school calendar, not more.

An instructional year is a different beast. It is not a quantitative measure. It is a qualitative achievement. Some children achieve their planned learning outcomes quickly and some children require more instruction and time. There is an expectation, if not a promise, that all children will be successful students.

The substance of an instructional calendar is found in Wisconsin Statute 118.01 which outlines the educational goals and expectations that meet the state’s responsibility for public education. A decade ago, this statute described course subjects required to be taught. A list of subjects was delineated. Today, the statute describes curricular expectations that are left to local school boards to define and implement.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118/01

The Wisconsin legislature adopted the Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts and Mathematics. The Wisconsin Model Academic Standards are in place for all other subjects and grade levels. These standards are the foundation for the creation of school district curricula in Wisconsin schools.

Using the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), school districts start with the scope of standards assigned to a chronological grade level and band standards into units of instruction. CCSS units are complex and complicated with scaffolds of sequenced and leveled standards that build upon one another. Student mastery of early units develops a competency for instruction in subsequent units. CSS units are organized into four to eight weeks of teaching and learning. In the aggregate, a standards-based year of instruction contains six to nine units of instruction.

An inarguable rule in education is that “Time lost is never found”. When we pack 180 days of school with six to nine units of instruction, there is little time to spare, yet life and weather happen and every school year experiences days of school that are cancelled due to weather and facilities or safety emergencies. Add in other interruptions of instructional time, unplanned school assemblies and celebrations, school visitors, and special events and more instructional time is lost. Instructional time is decreased and never increased. Very few instructional years are completed within the realities of a finite and interrupted school year.

Structurally, it is difficult to impossible to complete all the prescribed units of grade level or course instruction in a school year that shrinks. Each school year, CCSS standards that have been adopted by school boards as requirements are not taught due to “time ran out”.

Additionally, for reasons too numerous and complex to elaborate here, many children are not successful learners after their initial instruction. They require second and third tiers of instructional support. Each reteaching or newly conceived teaching and learning response takes time. One of the reasons so many children are not proficient in reading and math is that they require time more instruction each year than a finite school year provides. Instructionally, it is not only difficult – it is impossible – to cause all children to successfully learn their prescribed units of grade level or course instruction because children learn at different rates of time and when time is finite those who take longer to learn are stopped from learning because of the school calendar.

Why Is This Thus

The length of a school year is defined by economic and political constraints. It started with the agrarian calendar. Children could attend school after the fall harvest but needed to be available for spring planting. October through April. The Industrial Age did not change the school calendar much; children were part of the labor force making school attendance optional for most. The introduction of child labor laws and the need for immigrant children to be integrated into the national economy committed schools to day care and literacy education. These factors moved the school calendar toward September through May.

State legislatures counted the days between September 1 and June 1 and centered on 180 days as a school year. This number held from the 1930s through 2000. 180 was easily carved into two 90-day semesters and four 45-day quarters. Nine weeks per quarter, 18 weeks per semester and 36 weeks make a school school year. 180 days became the status quo school year.

The economics of a 180-day school year created a funding status quo. State allocations to school districts plus local tax collections were predicated on the amount of money required to fund school for 180 days. Politically, all state allocations in the state budget are competitive with all other state funded obligations. More school days require an increase in state of local taxes and increasing taxes is politically unpopular. Thus, the economic status quo of a 180-day school calendar.

A second economic and cultural hurdle to adding days to the school calendar is that working-age children represent seasonal labor for tourist-based state economies. Tourist and associated businesses make their money between Memorial Day and Labor Day. State legislators are lobbied to restrict school from starting prior to September 1 and to be completed as soon after Memorial Day as possible. These lobbies also oppose year-round school proposals.

Adding days is a no, but subtracting days is a yes. In Wisconsin, legislators deleted all statutory reference to a 180-day school year. School boards, required to meet the mandated hours of instruction, can add several minutes to each school day thereby meeting the requirement in less than 180 days. Seven minutes added to the school day or one minute added to each period in an eight-period school day allows the 1137 hours of instruction to be completed in 177 days.

This manipulation saves money. It does not provide an equivalent amount of real teaching and learning time. An additional minute to a class period is meaningless if not insulting.

Economics and politics define both the school and instructional years.

To Do

Look at alternatives to the status quo.

Stop accepting the unacceptable. The current economics and politics of education not only creates but accepts the reality that some children never complete an instructional year of teaching and learning. Our economy accepts that 10%+ of each class entering Kindergarten will not graduate from high school. Our politics accepts that 50%+ of children every year are not proficient in their grade level reading or math. And, we know that children who are not academically proficient by the end of sixth grade are more likely to drop out of school. And, we know that adults without a high school diploma experience limited economic prosperity. And, we know the correlation between low academic proficiency, dropping out of high school and crime. The “and, we knows” list is long, yet we accept them all as the status quo. Stop accepting.

Change the concept of instruction from yearly segments to a continuous progress line from first enrollment in 4K or Kindergarten to the completion of an elementary education. Consider middle school not as two or three years between elementary school and high school, but as a continuous learning model transitioning from elementary school to the course rigor of high school and including all the requisites of blooming adolescence. Consider high school not four years but a readiness for college and career that must be completed not encapsulated in time.

I am enthused by proficiency-based learning (PBL) and competency-based education (CBE). The concepts are not not new, but dissatisfaction with the status quo of student learning achievement has caused several states to renew their interest in PBL and CBE. The Vermont legislator moved all public schools in that state to PBL and CBE.

https://education.vermont.gov/student-learning/proficiency-based-learning

PBL and CBE do not change the limitation of the finite school year. They allows us to change the concept of instruction from yearly to continuous. A Vermont student beginning Kindergarten starts a continuous record of learning progress ending with graduation not June of 12th grade.

I am enthused by continuous progress reporting rather than annual performance reporting. We currently use annual performance reporting as a public accountability tool. In Wisconsin, public accountability is directed at school choice options. This was born out of the No Child Left Behind penalties placed upon underperforming schools.

Stop using school report cards to affirm or denigrate school districts and schools. We have learned that penalizing schools whose underperformance on normed instructional measures to be achieved within the finite school year is whistling in the wind. We know that children with learning disadvantages and challenges are more than unlikely to accomplish an instructional calendar that requires more than a school year of time. Begin using continuous progress measures of learning that depict positive learning growth not arbitrary deficiency.

The Big Duh

A school year is not a year of teaching and learning. The first is a need to comply with finite time and the second is a matter of using time for teaching and learning to achieve required educational outcomes.

School is what it is because that is the way it always has been. School leaders annually try to achieve greater accomplishments within antiquated and faulted constraints. As national and state communities of educators, we know better.

When you know the right things to do, do them.