Can The National Center on Time & Learning Bring Longer Schools Days to One Million Students?

Abstract

Summary

After decades of devising effective solutions to seemingly intractable problems, social entrepreneurship is ready for the next major challenge: making the most promising innovations available to many more people, that is, “scaling what works.” The National Center on Time & Learning was launched for the sole purpose of dramatically increasing the number of extended-day schools across the country.   This article critically examines NCTL’s audacious goals and its strategy for achieving them.

On October 2, 2007, a distinguished group of education policy and foundation leaders joined members of Congress in Washington, D.C., to announce the launch of the National Center on Time & Learning. NCTL is an ambitious initiative designed to make adoption of extended learning time (ELT) — “initiatives that add more school time for academic and enrichment opportunities to help all children meet the demands of the 21st Century” — a national priority. The announcement marked a new phase in the decades-long climb toward enlarging the typical American school day, week and year beyond the 6.5-hour, Monday through Friday, September to June boundaries established in the nineteenth century to accommodate the needs of agrarian families working outside without the benefit of electric light.