Georgia Policy Labs Reports
Reallocating Instructional Time to Promote Academic Recovery
Files
Download Full Text
Document Type
Report
Publication Date
8-16-2024
Abstract
In this report, Tim R. Sass studies a large school district in the metro-Atlanta area that re-organized instructional time during the school day for students in lower elementary grades to counter the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated abrupt shift to remote instruction. The district told teachers in Grades K–2 to devote more instructional time to mathematics and English/language arts (ELA) during the first 9 weeks of school year (SY) 2021-22. The increased time came from the 45-minutes-per-day usually dedicated to teaching science or social studies. Using rich individual-level administrative data and responses from a survey of principals, Sass first compares test scores of students in the same school. He finds that average student achievement (relative to national norms) was higher in Grades K–2 than in Grades 3–5 at the beginning of school year SY 2021–22. This differential remained the same on the mid-year (winter) exams, suggesting the reorganization of instructional time in Grades K–2 did not substantially improve student achievement in math or reading. Further analysis, controlling for student characteristics, revealed that during the first half of SY 2021–22, math and reading scores grew more for students in Grades K–2 than did the scores of similar students in the same schools in Grades 3–5. However, Sass observes this same pattern of high achievement growth in early elementary grades when the intervention did not occur—pre-pandemic SY 2018–19—reinforcing the conclusion that boosting instructional time in math and reading for 9 weeks did not substantially improve student learning trajectories in either subject. The reasons why reallocating instructional time did not increase achievement growth is unclear: (a) The extra time may not have been used efficiently, (b) adding 110 minutes per subject per week of instruction for 9 weeks may not be enough to change achievement growth over the course of an 18-week semester, or (c) student needs may have been too varied to effectively address in a whole-class setting. Moving forward, districts seeking to aid students who lost ground academically during the pandemic may want to consider shifting resources to strategies like high-dosage, small-group tutoring, which research has documented to effective. This type of tutoring can be expensive, however, so districts will likely need to carefully analyze current student achievement levels and target interventions to students who need the most help
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/sxng-2p47
Recommended Citation
Sass, Tim, "Reallocating Instructional Time to Promote Academic Recovery" (2024). Georgia Policy Labs Reports. 68.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/sxng-2p47
Comments
An accompanying appendix and policy brief to this report are available from the report landing page.