On School Time, It’s Better, Not More

This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Terry Stoops, Education Policy Analyst for the John Locke Foundation.

Among the many ideas to reduce North Carolina’s alarming dropout rate, well-intentioned legislators and school officials have once again proposed extending the school day. Like their counterparts in other states, they reason that additional learning time will ensure that struggling students do not fall behind in essential subjects like reading and math. However, research suggests that it is the quality of the instruction, not the length of the school day, that increases student achievement.

International comparisons of test results and instructional time show that more is not necessarily better. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), students in the United States spend an average of 4.7 school hours per week, or 169 hours per year, on mathematics instruction. The average for the 29 OECD nations is 3.8 hours per week and 140 hours per year. In other words, students in the United States receive the equivalent of six more weeks of mathematics instruction than students in the average nation.

Given the additional instructional time, we would expect our students to score above the average on mathematics assessments, but the opposite is true. Students in the United States score far below average on tests such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) math exam, a test given every three years to a sample of students in each OECD country. On the 2003 PISA math test, students in the United States ranked 24th out of the 29 countries tested.

The five top-performing countries on the PISA mathematics assessment do not consistently spend the highest amounts of school time on mathematics instruction. Only Korea spent more time per week and per year on mathematics than the United States. Canada and Japan’s weekly and yearly commitment to math instruction was comparable to the U.S., while school systems in Finland and the Netherlands spent much less time per week and per year on math. For example, Finland’s 114 hours per year is 55 hours, or the equivalent of 12 weeks less than the time spent on in-school math instruction in the United States.

Similarly, the five lowest-performing countries do not also fill out the bottom of the list when it comes to instructional time. In fact, weekly instructional time in Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Mexico are above the average for OECD nations. In comparison to the U.S. average, Portugal, Italy, and Greece spend less time in math classes per week, while Turkey and Mexico spend much more. Turkey and Mexico also provide students more hours per year than the United States, but they were the two lowest-performing countries on the PISA mathematics test.

To examine this phenomenon in greater detail, a group of researchers from Penn State University conducted a statistical analysis that compared instructional time and student performance on international assessments, including the PISA and the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Their study, “Instructional Time and National Achievement: Cross National Evidence,” concluded that there was no significant correlation between instructional time in math, science, reading, and civics and test scores on international assessments of those subjects.

The report showed that a nation’s total instructional time had little bearing on achievement. Tenth-grade students in Mexico have the most instructional time in school of any nation tested, more than 1,100 hours per year, but posted very low test scores. On the other hand, 10th-grade students in Finland spend 850 instructional hours in school every year and had among the highest scores of any participating nation. According to the report, 10th graders in the United States spend an average of 990 instructional hours in school every year, 45 hours above the international average and in the top 25 percent of nations in total instructional time. Researchers found no consistent relationship between instructional hours in the United States and achievement on international assessments.

The researchers’ policy recommendation could not be more direct: “Do not waste resources in marginal increases in instructional time, as long as the system falls within world norms. If there is a choice between using resources to increase time versus improving teaching and the curriculum, give priority to the latter.” Indeed, high-performing countries are successful because they employ strong leaders, focus on measurable results, and maintain very high expectations for all teachers, parents, and students. Our public schools should focus on the same.