As back-to-school season kicks into gear, more and more schools across the country are preparing to keep their doors open for a longer school day to improve results for students. In fact, a recent paper by the National Center on Time & Learning reported that more than 1,000 schools across the country have implemented longer school days. Here at Citizen Schools, we are preparing to launch expanded learning time (ELT) programs in partnership with 19 middle schools in six states across the country. Schools from the Bronx in New York City to an Apache reservation school in rural Mescalero, NM have signed on to partner with Citizen Schools to lengthen the school day by bringing in Citizen Schools’ “second shift” of educators and use the additional time as a catalyst for innovation across the entire school day.

Based on the available data from five schools that have piloted ELT with Citizen Schools, for one to four years, average annual proficiency gains have been much larger than previous years’ gains. Prior to instituting ELT, on average, our partner schools made no or minimal progress in building student proficiency and performed slightly worse than district averages. After partnering with Citizen Schools on ELT, scores began to increase in both math and English Language Arts (on average, just over 9 percentage points per year gained in math and nearly 7 percentage points per year gained in English Language Arts).

Read an Education Week Op-Ed by Eric Schwarz, co-founder and CEO of Citizen Schools, and Fred Frelow of the Ford Foundation on how quality ELT programs can help narrow the achievement gap.

Sign up for an archived version of an ELT webinar hosted by Education Week. Emily McCann, president of Citizen Schools, and Jennifer Davis, president of the National Center on Time & Learning, co-presented on national trends in ELT and the Citizen Schools “partner-dependent” ELT model.

Read more about Citizen Schools and ELT.