Make The Most Of Every Minute
Time, like money, is a scarce resource in schools. Maximizing the impact of every minute of the day for students and teachers alike is key to cost effectively raising achievement. Too often schedules seem to get in the way of implementing best practices for teaching and learning, intervention, and special education services. A less than perfect schedule also adds to teacher stress and raises costs. Schedules should be viewed as a strategically important tool that facilitates proven best practices.
Designing a Strategic Schedule
A strategic schedule amplifies a school’s strategic priorities, encourages teaching and learning best practices, heightens student engagement, and ensures equitable opportunities—all in a cost-effective manner. Key practices schools should consider to make their schedule more strategic include:
1. Set clear goals and priorities first
Six-period or seven-period schedule? Block schedule or trimester schedule? There is no shortage of schedule options for school and district leaders to choose from. Existing (and extensive) research has not identified a correlation between scheduling models and student achievement. Simply changing the school bell schedule from a seven-period schedule to a block schedule, for example, does not guarantee better student performance, despite many school and district administrators' best hopes.
Instead, schedules should ultimately be determined based on student needs and school and district goals and priorities. Research and change management best practices suggest that districts must define clear priorities and goals and then—and only then—evaluate which schedule model is best.
2. Ensure elementary schedules support uninterrupted core instruction and dedicated intervention time
Students who struggle often receive less core instruction than their non-struggling peers. They get pulled out for speech and language, resource room and other needed services. Unfortunately, this extra help can undermine mastering reading, writing and math. Careful scheduling, however, can cost-effectively provide all required services and without diminishing a moment of core instruction.
In fact, with the help of an expert scheduler and clear guidelines, struggling students can also get daily intervention without sacrificing art, music and other whole child offerings.
3. Create a principal and central office team to manage secondary schedules together
Secondary schedules are complex. What courses are offered and at what levels lays the foundation for teaching and learning. The amount of choice and voice greatly impacts student engagement, and of course staffing levels can either enable or restrict what can be scheduled. This difficult task is typically the domain of school-based staff directed by the principal. This approach is seldom the best way to build the best schedule. A central office and principal partnership can help students, staff and the budget. Principals know what their school needs, but only central office can relax rules and constraints that often place unintended limits on what can be scheduled. A highly structured scheduling process that jointly answers big strategic questions first and then dives into the fine detail second can turn good schedules into great schedules.
4. Don't forget to review and manage special education and intervention staff schedules
Schools have schedules and so do teachers. Some staff schedules are made for them, like a high school math teacher, but many others make their own. Special educators, reading teachers, instructional coaches, social workers, and school psychologists are expected to figure out their schedule themselves. They are often at the mercy of other people's schedules and asked to do many varied tasks. While they build the best schedules they can, doing so alone seldom maximizes their impact or quality of work life.
By fostering teamwork, infusing expertise, and setting clear priorities in advance, any school can have a schedule that raises achievement and maximizes the impact of every minute.
Why are middle school schedules so hard to change and improve?
While all master schedules are complicated, middle school schedules are often the hardest to refine. Competing priorities, strong opinions by staff, teaming, and a changing world all collide when folks sit down to revise a middle school schedule. The result is less than perfect schedules persist for years, because no new alternative can be agreed upon. Fortunately a structured strategic scheduling approach can help.
Start by answering the big questions first, then review options based on how well each alternative meets the agreed upon priorities. Key questions include:
• How much time should be devoted to core instruction vs. noncore?
• What is needed for intervention?
• When and how should students have voice and choice?
• How will social and emotional needs be met?
• How can teacher collaboration best help teachers meet the needs of students?
What Success Looks Like
One district increased ELA proficiency rates by 30% after revamping their 22 elementary schedules to support best practices in reading.
A district created broad-based support for new middle school schedules that increased core instruction, added daily intervention and provided meaningful student choice all while trimming costs through attrition. Past attempts for change had been stymied for years.
Many districts have increased the hours each day reading teachers, social workers and school psychologists can work with students by 40% while simultaneously improving staff work-life balance.
A large suburban high school revamped its schedule and more creatively managed course offerings, which allowed them to add additional sections of math and literacy intervention–without adding a single additional teacher or reducing electives.
Winter 2024
Secondary Scheduling Academy
Design an improved schedule that helps raise student achievement, increase student engagement, address learning loss, and maximize the impact of staff within your existing budget.
