Viewpoints
(VP): How and when did you become
involved with after school programs and the
out of school
movement? You’ve been
involved in this for quite a
long time now.
Gabrieli (G): Yeah, almost a decade. Time flies.
VP: Wow.
G: It started off with – I had been long
interested in education, and I’m someone who’s had some success in my own
life. My parents were immigrants, and I
attribute a lot of that to – my success – to having a good education. And naturally, when I was fortunate enough to
be in the opportunity to spend some of my time trying to give back through
public policy, education was my focus.
The mayor of Boston
asked me to chair a commission – a sort of task force on after school in Boston. To be honest, I didn’t know much about what
that meant, although I could deduce from the two words it must be something
about what happens after school. Through
that, I really felt like my eyes were opened because I’d been struggling with
the question of why are we having such a hard time helping educate all kids to
similar outcomes? And I wasn’t as
convinced as common belief that it was – the problem was just somehow with
schools that happened to be poorer and poorly run (overlapping conversations;
inaudible)
VP: More than just a discrepancy in schools, or
that the schools were being inefficient, or –
G: No.
I thought one interpretation was, by coincidence, schools are exactly
proportionately good as to the poverty levels of their children. Or the more obvious conclusion from the data
was there’s something about poverty levels – socioeconomic status of kids –
that is much more determinative of their educational outcomes in their
schools. I think the data’s much more in
that favor.
So I began being interested in that
idea, I hadn’t thought it through. And
then when I focused on the fact that kids spend 80% of the hours they’re awake
not in school, I said well, OK, I think this might be the explanation for a lot
of the variation in kids’ performance.
Not differences in their school day, but differences in their
opportunities outside of school. So,
that really led me into the after school field.
And ultimately, having worked with the Nellie Mae Education Foundation
and 12 other foundations to put together a lot of money – $25 million to expand
after school programs in Boston
–
VP: And this is Boston’s Afterschool for All
Partnership.
G: That’s exactly right.
VP: That was in 2001?
G: That’s right. It was launched in the spring of 2001 as Boston’s Afterschool for
All Partnership. And it was a five year
partnership of these 13 organizations – the City of Boston, and 12, actually, private
foundations, universities and companies.
We achieved a lot during that period of time, but one thing we did not
achieve, I think, was identifying, necessarily, a policy that could really
expand in large scale and public funding what’s available to kids.
VP: Because the idea behind the partnership, if I
recall, is to get the buy in so this hopefully starts the train down the track
towards it being policy and public money supporting these programs.
G: Certainly one of our goals was to increase
public financing. Our goal was to build
on some models that succeed. And our
tremendous examples in the after school field are programs that offer kids help
on their academic content, as well as really expose them to opportunities they
would not normally ever have, whether it’s in arts or music or drama, or
experiential learning and apprenticeships, and many, many different things that
Nellie Mae Education Foundation and a lot of other people support, and trying
to expand those, strengthen those, was the goal.
And certainly I think we did a lot
of that. Boston has – I almost said
Buffalo, where I grew up – Boston has double the percentage of kids in after
school programs in the last seven or eight years. That’s great.
But it is not necessarily a systemic large scale solution, because each
of those programs has to raise its money every year. They can’t really make students stay, they
often have to kind of be squatters at schools, even in schools, so their door’s
open to them. They’re not necessarily
able to connect as well as they would like and so forth. And so I got interested in the question of
whether we couldn’t develop a model where you just took the whole school and
made a longer day.
VP: You were beginning to talk about how this
evolved, and your organization, Massachusetts 2020, has led the way on the
Expanded Learning Time, or ELT, initiative in Massachusetts. And how did that come about and formulate
from your work with Afterschool?
G: So Jennifer Davis, who’s my cofounder of
Mass 2020 and the president, and I had often ruminated about well, if we could
design the world the way we wanted to, how would we do it? And we would take to the best of what we’ve
seen in an after school programs, and incorporate into every kids life every
day. And one vehicle seems to be to do
it through schools and with schools. And
so we had a unique opportunity come up, which was the State of Massachusetts was
subject to a lawsuit from a group of plaintiffs who alleged that the state
wasn’t meeting it’s constitutional goal –
VP: Hancock Driscoll.
G: Hancock v. Driscoll, that’s really
good. And that had already been
determined at the lower court level that in fact the state was failing to meet
its constitutional obligation to give all kids an equal education. And we got the idea that we could write a
brief, as an amicus brief, going into the appeals court level – actually it’s
up to the SJC – that would argue that if you’re going to think about what kids
really need, don’t just think in money terms, think in time terms. And that we would make the case that time itself is almost a constitutional requirement – adequate
time, not just adequate money – to reach education levels. And so we screwed up the nerve to ask the
Nellie Mae Education Foundation to fund us, and they were kind enough to do
so. And that was really our first big
foray.
And actually, I was thinking about it
just at their big conference last week.
It was very valuable for us, because although the court case ended up
not settling in favor that would matter
for us – so in a sense, it was wasted, in that sense – but it really made us
pull together the intellectual underpinnings of the arguments. What should – how would you do this if you
did it in scale. If you were the state
and you were actually obliged to give kids the time they need to learn, what
would that look like? Which
is sort of our core premises in our organization, that society has that
obligation, and that we need to change.
And so in fact at a time when we thought that the court case might
prevail, we came back and said we need support from others to really develop
the capability to create a roadmap of what it might look like. And that led to the program that Massachusetts now
has.
VP: What is the state of the Expanded Learning
Time initiative right now? How many
schools are funded, what does it mean for buy-in, what does it mean for these
schools to be part of this initiative?
G: So, the first year in Massachusetts with
the Expanded Learning Time initiative, in terms of school implementing, was the
school year that ended in the spring of 2007 – fall of 2006 to spring 2007 – in
which 10 pioneering schools from five districts with about 4700 students became
the first standard public schools in America to just convert from an old
schedule to a new schedule, where every kid goes 25% more time every day. That’s – not that the schools are obliged,
they could make a longer year for 25% more time, but almost all have picked a
longer day. And in that longer time,
bring in both more time for core academics, so kids can reach the levels they
need to have skills, but also, time to have enrichment in arts, music and drama
everyday.
VP: That’s what I was going to ask. Is the reasoning behind – you’re talking
about what would the ideal model look like.
A couple more hours each day is fine.
But what do you do with that? Was
the purpose when you were developing this idea, was it – how much of it was
between let’s focus on academics, and how much of it was on –you hear the
phrase educating the whole child?
G: We believe in both. We really believe it ourselves, although the
schools are free to have quite a bit of individual flexibility in how they use
the time. And then I think one of the
most powerful pieces of this, as a reform initiative is that it is school
driven. So the design’s different at
each school, and the teacher who help design it are
the one’s who deliver it. And whenever
you develop something, you tend to buy in and go do it. So –
VP: Right.
Instant ownership.
G: Yeah, so I think that’s an – and different
kids have different needs. But
generally, we advocate for and provide technical assistance to communities to
develop, and all have what I would call a balanced model, so that they usually
spend about a half to two thirds of the extra time on core academic time – more
time in English class, more time in Math class.
Sometimes it’s two classes, sometimes it’s done
differently. But always more time on
those basics, where, frankly most of these schools, the kids – not enough of
the kids are reaching proficiency as will need to, to succeed in their lives. But also, every school spends on the order of
a third of their time – an average of 200 minutes a week across our schools –
on enrichment, basically, where they give kids usually an elective period a day
where they can pick from arts, music, drama, sports, forensics –
VP: Forensics?
G: – robotics. Yeah, forensics is very big at the Kuss Middle
School in Fall River. Yeah, they all see the TV show, turns
out. And that’s a good example of what
people call project based learning. I
mean, it’s fun.
The kids are enthusiastic because they see CSI or whatever, and –
VP: It’s not typically classroom…
G: It’s not something you’d have a course in
a normal class. And yet, there’s some
real science learned along the way. And
some of that programming is done by the schools, where teachers themselves will
volunteer in something that interests them.
Others are done by – a lot is done by community based organizations that
come in, who have an expertise in some particular field, and offer it built
into the day. As I say, almost always an
elective for kids. And we’ve learned –
and we thank the role model schools that we were able to copy, because there
were other schools before us – not standard public schools, but other schools
that have done more time.
VP Pilot schools…
G: Charter schools would be the biggest category, there are probably about 1000 charter schools in America – 90% of the charter schools in Massachusetts are in
this category – who use quite a bit more time.
And what we found – But also some pilot schools, as you say, some
independent public schools that just somehow found a way around the rules, like
the Timilty School long ago here in Boston.
Or University Park
school, and others like that that have just found away
around the rules. All of them come from
the same lesson, which is…look, you’ve got to give
kids more time on the basics. They do
more time to learn means more learning.
But also, you got to engage kids and make them want to go to school, and
be excited about it. So we find that all
the schools – very few kids thank us for more time in English and Math. They don’t necessarily complain, but they
don’t thank us for that. They do thank
us for the enrichment opportunities.
They’re very revved up about that.
VP: So from more time to the enrichment
opportunities, obviously there’s cost associated with this. What has the cost been, and how is that paid
for, and who pays for it?
G: The way the program works is, schools
apply. And if the department of education approves them, and subject to the
annual budget of the state, they receive $1300 per student per year to
implement this, which is about 15% more money for about 25%-30% more time. So it’s pretty cost effective, because you’re
not paying for a second bus run, you’re not paying for more principal time or
janitor time. You’re basically just
paying for more teacher time and for the outside programs. It’s proven to be very practical. There are now – I mentioned the first year
there were 10 schools, there are now 18 schools and twice the number of
students. And really turns out public
schools that are motivated can really do this, they
can really make that big a change.
There’re a lot of nuances. In an English class, spending more time in
English – what does that mean? And you
could use, I think, pretty drearily or pretty engagingly. The schools that are doing the best I think
use the time not just for more of the teacher standing and lecturing, but much
more for one on one time for students, for small groups, for teachers teaching –
I mean, for student’s teaching each other – in small group settings, for peer
learning, which is a proven effective model.
For differentiated instruction, where the kids who are advanced are
getting really challenging work, and the kids who need more help to get the
basics are getting the tutoring they need and so forth. The more that time is done that way, the more
it become project based learning in the extra time, not just rote learning and
so forth, I think the more powerful a tool it is. And not every teacher knows how to do
that.
Part of a longer day is more time for
teachers, too, to do common planning time and embedded professional
development. Because they need to
generally learn more, and they need to learn how to use more time better. But overall, it’s been amazingly, I think,
successful in terms of when you get practical about it, does it really work for
schools and teachers and principals and so forth –
VP: And that’s what I was –
G: And the answer is yes.
VP: That’s what I was about to ask you, is how –
you’ve just finished your first year, and you’ve just surveyed the results of
the first year of this program. What
have the results been? How successfully
– we’re in the age of increased accountability –
G: Absolutely.
VP: – in standards, and that has been the mantra,
here in Massachusetts
and nationally, for exponentially increased over the past seven, eight
years.
G: No, that’s right. And I think that we feel very strongly an
initiative like this should be measured, both to make sure it’s worth doing at
all, and to learn what’s working best, and hopefully copy from that. Here’s how we look at it, after one
year: All the schools that did it in the
first year renewed for second year, which I think is itself something. Four out of the five districts that have
adopted it in the first year expanded to more schools in the second year. So there again, you have people voting with
their feet.
We have almost 100 schools in the
planning process, so as word spreads, more and more
people have become interested in doing it.
We’ve surveyed parents, and nearly 80% say they think this makes a
significant academic difference for their child, and about the same level think
it’s overall beneficial to their child.
More than 50% think their child’s more engaged in school. One thing people worry about is this’ll be a
turn off for kids. Well, parents are
reporting far more likely it’s a turn on.
VP: Are the parents seeing any benefits outside
of school, or –
G: I think parents very much do get a
benefit. I think one of the reasons to
do this, in addition to helping students, which is our core focus, is for
working families, it’s always been an absurdity to have school get out at 1:30
or 2:00, and (overlapping conversation; inaudible)
VP: They’re still at work.
G: The parents are still at work, and not
necessarily in a position – even if they have resources, and many don’t – to
make sure their child’s in a safe and supervised and engaged place. The teachers have reported, in surveys, that by a 70-7 majority, 70% say they see
significant academic improvement in students because of more learning
time. 7% say it’s actually worse, so I
guess there’s going to be disagreers anywhere, but
that’s a huge margin.
VP: Well, that leads me to my next question. If it’s such a success, and if the results
are in, as you say, and people have been voting with their feet, and districts
are renewing, why isn’t every school lining up for this? And why – and are there people here who are –
I don’t want to call them naysayers, but who have had a problem, and is there a
particular contingency that seems to not like the idea of ELT? And if so, why, do you think?
G: Well, that’s a great set of questions, and
many of which we don’t really have a good answer to today, in terms of – people
ask all the time should this be for every school? The design of our reform was - it’s
voluntary. Schools and districts have to
go through a planning process. The
planning process is very important. It’s
actually integral to the success, because we’re expecting them to redesign
their day, not take last year’s schedule and tack an hour and a half or two
on. But do it from scratch. So you can’t find the expanded – it’s not
like an after school program that you know what exists at the end of the
day. This time is woven into the day in
ways that make it all one fabric.
We felt like it made most sense to
provide scarce resources to the schools that really want to do this and not
spend time trying to make somebody do something they don’t want to do and
squander resources at it, too. Turns out
there are plenty of takers, so that has been a good strategy.
As to who else could be doing it,
should be doing it, one day will be doing it – I mean, right now we see a trend
towards schools, now that they see it’s for real – I mean, those first 10
schools were brave pioneers. They had no
certainty the money would come from the state, they had no certainly it could
really be pulled off, they had to negotiate first ever
union contracts to allow for this, and many other logistical challenges.
VP: A lot of unprecedented things came out of
this.
G: A lot of unprecedented. So you probably had to be a risk taker to be
in that first crew. The smarter plan was
probably to say let’s see how they do for a year or two. We are certainly seeing a lot more people
joining in, as a result of it. You know,
it’s not necessarily going to be something every district wants to do or every
school wants to do. We have a lot of
elementary and middle schools, we only have a few high schools. High school’s more complicated – kids have
jobs, kids have more intense sports and extra curricular. I think they can work with that, but it’s a
little bit more complicated model, and people want to see more of that before
they’re convinced.
It is, right now, being applied
chiefly to schools and communities where kids have historically been – done
poorly on academic tests. Not
surprisingly, those are schools and districts that have said oh my gosh, we need to do something here, and more time might
really help. We do have some – certainly
some students and some schools that would be more middle income, middle class,
middle to upper performance, but far fewer.
Many of those schools and districts, I think, feel less of a sense of
urgency right now to change their system.
One could argue that in the 21st century economy, maybe they
should be raising their expectations for their kids (overlapping conversations;
inaudible) –
VP: And (inaudible) should probably be raising
their expectations?
G: I think so. But you know, I think that’s a judgment call
that –
VP: Decisions they have to make for themselves.
G: – right now they have to make for
themselves. And what the education world
might think about all of this in five or ten years, when this becomes a lot
more established, is sort of I’m looking forward to finding out myself.
VP: Well what do you say – it’s two or three
hours extra each day. Some people might
say well – And you point to the success of this in your report, that recently
released, as the increased MCAS scores of participating schools.
G: Yeah, I didn’t get to brag on those
earlier.
VP: Yeah, well, I’m throwing it at you right now.
G: Thank you.
VP: So you can talk about it. Congratulations, too.
G: Thank you.
We’re all excited.
VP: But in that climate, there might be some
people who say well with the extra two to three hours, wouldn’t it best be
spent on intense tutoring and mentoring and really hardcore academic
focus? What would you say to them?
G: We certainly think the first and foremost
goal of this program is to help kids reach higher academic achievement. Period. We think a well rounded education is a really
important goal as well. As I mentioned,
we favor this balanced approach of both more academic time and more
enrichment. But I think if we fail to
deliver on helping these kids achieve their higher academic levels, I think – I
doubt the state will want to fund it, and I think it gets into a different zone
of issues about childcare and youth development – that are legitimate areas,
but there’s less of a societal commitment to paying for that. So one of the things we measure right from
the beginning is how are they doing academically? And the exciting thing is they made – the 10
schools made, collectively, really strong gains. And the percentage of kids who are
proficient, which is our target as a country and a state, in English, math and
science, in all three subject areas, the schools collectively gained more than the
state did. In math, 44% more kids who
were proficient than the year before: In English Language Arts - 39%, and in
science -19%. Those are big jumps.
VP: There seems to be a big movement where people
are starting to really seriously reevaluate the quote unquote traditional
school day. Do you think that we might
be moving towards a time where we’re exploring the reinvention of what it means
– what the traditional school day means?
When kids are educated, how they’re educated, where, and by whom?
G: I surely hope so. I mean, I think that is our core
premise. And you’re absolutely right
that charter schools were among the pioneers for really trying very different
schedules. The KIPP Academies that
people talk about around the country with extraordinary results use 60% more
time each year for their students. They
go a longer day – 7:30-5:00. They go
Saturday mornings, and they go a month in the summer. So that’s pretty out there. Pilot schools really represent an innovation
where schools can be more autonomous and figure out what they want to do. Many pilot schools choose to use more
time. I mean, the current school day is
not chosen because people think it through and say this is the right time. It’s chosen because it was last year’s
schedule. Literally – just it would be
hard to change from last year, why don’t we just do what we did last year
again. There really is almost no one who
defends it. And people will tell you
about a change proposed to it – it’s too expensive, it’s too hard, it’s too
this, it’s too that. Well you say
OK. So then you think 180 days and six
hours, six and half hours, and put the kids on the street at 1:30 is a good
plan? Then they’re like oh no, no, no I
didn’t say that.
So I do agree. I think you said – hit it right on the – nail
on the head when you say, I think we’re in a moment, finally, of really saying
well what could school be like? What
should education be like? What is
learning time? School is an incredible
opportunity to be a broader and bigger institution, taking on not just their full
academic needs, but also more their total youth development. I mean, you mentioned outcomes. There’s a lot of ways to develop what a kid’s
full potential really is, and I don’t see why schools shouldn’t take a much
larger percentage of that total duty on.
I think we’d all be better served if they did.
VP: I mean, is it as simple as that? Is it time being the end game that will help
alter what school really is? Or is it an
entry point –
G: Oh no, it’s –
VP: – for a larger discussion about –
G: It’s purely enabling. I mean, time is just like money – it’s in and
of itself not a good. It is what you do
with it. I think the question even of
what percentage of total educational and developmental work ought to be done by
standard public school versus what families themselves and communities do, we could have a great debate on. But I don’t think we could have a debate that
we’re falling short now. If we had kids
doing better academically, if we had kids getting into less trouble, if we had
more enrichment opportunities for kids built in, we might have a fun debate –
how far do you go? I’m not suggesting
boarding schools for every child in America –
VP: Right.
But we’re at a time where the skill set is dramatically different than
it even was 20 years ago
–
G: When you have a 50% dropout rate in many
of our urban centers, and you have huge – even among those who graduate, much
lower proficiency rates, much lower likelihood to go to college, much lower
likely to complete college – 30% of college freshman require remediation to be
able to take a college course even they’re supposedly a high school graduate –
w got plenty of distance to go before we start to get into the debate about
what’s a luxury.
VP: And then especially at a point in time where
you hear the term 21st century skills. It is global economy now. It is a different time. It seems that –
G: It is really a different time. And I think that is something that, quite
frankly, I think a lot of people in the middle class haven’t fully faced up to,
which is that they got into the middle class through a set of jobs that were
available in the 20th century and to their parents or to themselves,
that their kids are going to be hard pressed to find. There won’t be a lot of good manufacturing
jobs now likely in the United
States.
Even a lot of white collar midlevel jobs are being automated our
outsourced, or both. I don’t think you
can underestimate the pressure that there will be for kids to have high
skills. The job stuff’s really crucial,
and I don’t want to minimize that. But I
think sometimes that makes it sound like schools should just be there to be
factories of –
VP: For economic –
G: Yeah.
VP: Part of the economic machine, and that’s not
their sole purpose.
G: That’s not the only reason at all.
VP: How do we get public buy-in – there seems to
be buy-in within the communities that have been part of ELT. How do you get people to understand that this
is working, and it benefits everyone for everyone’s children to be better educated?
G: I think that you ask a question with lots
of levels, and some of them are hard. I
mean, when 70% of households don’t have kids, it’s a pretty altruistic pitch to
say you should care a lot about how we could spend more money to educate
somebody else’s kids. Some people in
that 70% are obviously enthusiastic, but some have their own concerns about the
cost of prescription drugs, and housing on fixed incomes, and retirement, and
lots of other considerations that are meritorious, too.
But I think it’s more a question of,
within the education system, do we say we want to do more of the same, even
though we know what it’s lacking. And
people say in the education system, we know we need to make significant changes. Or do we have the courage to say here’s the
significant change, makes common sense, supported by teachers, teachers’
unions, superintendents, principals, families.
I mean, it’s got pretty widespread support. And it works.
Do we say let’s seize onto this, or do we all say well, yeah, that’s a
little risky, why don’t we just keep doing what we were doing before and
somehow hope that that will be better.
Yes, we need strong public will, and I wish I could – knew how to summon
that with a magic wand. But I’m sure, in
the end, it will be the policy makers who really have to make the important
decisions about where our priorities are.
Nationally, we’re in an exciting
time. We have started a sister
organization called the National
Center on Time and
Learning. We don’t want to distract
ourselves at Massachusetts 2020 from the core work in our state, and the best
way we can help the national movement is by doing the best job we can here in Massachusetts. But we have discovered a rapidly growing
interest across the country. Seven or
eight other states came to our conference last week to observe, who were
interested in maybe doing it in their state.
And we are gearing up to be able to support some of the other states as
they think about it at a policy level, and as they begin to implement it at
schools. It’s my expectation there’ll be
several states that at least try experiments within the next two or three
years, because again, this is a kind of common sense approach. And now that there’s a role model to look to
in Massachusetts,
that you really can do this in standard public schools,
I think that’s really getting people excited.
VP: What is your hope for the Expanded Learning
Time movement in 10 years? Let’s say
it’s 10 years from now, where do you want Expanded Learning Time to be? What do you think’s a realistic goal?
G: I think the realistic goal is that by 10
years from now, we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say Expanded
Learning Time. That we’ve redefined our
notion of what is the proper amount of time and the proper amount of – scope of
coverage that schools provide kids. And
I think that if we went to such a approach, if we reached that point, I think
we will kind of look back at this sort of quaint relic of the school day we
have today, and think, as we do about so many things of the past as well, how
could you possibly have helped kids succeed and families succeed, and
communities stay safe when you put kids on the street at such an early hour,
and didn’t complete the job of education.
VP: Chris Gabrieli, thanks for talking to Viewpoints today.
G: My pleasure. Thank you.
