Policymakers across the country are focused on strategies to close achievement gaps, improve the lowest-performing schools, and prepare students for success in higher education and the workforce.
To achieve these college readiness goals, a growing number of policymakers are coming to understand that the conventional American school calendar too often stands as an enormous impediment to educating the next generation.
NCTL works with policy leaders at the federal, state and local level to develop policies that support districts and schools to be innovative in their use of time, technology, staff, data, and funding in order to ensure a high-quality education for all students.
As a part of our policy work, we help states and districts access federal funding and utilize state resources effectively. In the last several years, many states have passed laws allowing new school-level autonomies within traditional district schools. Having flexibility in governance (either as a charter or in-district school) has enabled educators to reconfigure schedules, staffing, and budgeting, often in ways that can allow for substantially more learning hours for all students in the school and more time for teacher collaboration. Further, states have also promoted expanding time as a key strategy in turning around chronically under-performing schools, and have also leveraged additional federal resources to support the implementation of this strategy.