Educational Opportunity and Scholarship
More and Better Learning Time
In the Headlines
27 April 2012In Chicago, Promoting Expanded Learning Time to Advance Student Achievement
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is leading an effort to lengthen and improve school days in the city. Many local groups disagree about exactly what shape those redesigned days should take, but this NPR report suggests there’s agreement on at least one thing: In any effort to expand learning time, enhancing the quality of that time must also be a priority. Through our More and Better Learning Time initiative, the foundation is working to reinvent the school day and year so it better meets the learning needs of students and the lives of working families.
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More Information
- Explore our More and Better Learning Time initiative
- Read the Ford Foundation president’s Tomás Rivera Lecture on expanded learning
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Chicago Wants Longer School Day; Foes Want Details
April 23, 2012 By David SchaperMost kids in Chicago’s public schools spend just five hours and 45 minutes in school a day. It’s one of the shortest school days in the country.
That’s why more than half of the city’s public elementary schools have no recess. At those that do, it’s shockingly short.
“We have a 10-minute recess and a 10-minute lunch at our school,” says Wendy Katten, mother of a third-grader at Burley Elementary School in Chicago. “It’s not sufficient.”
The city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, wants to change that. Since taking office last year, he has been pushing to lengthen the day to 7 1/2 hours in every school, which would make Chicago’s elementary school days among the country’s longest.