College readiness is a key component of the YES Prep mission. And, as the Broad Foundation report highlights, one of the key factors in its success is an expanded school schedule. The YES Prep school day ranges from an 8 ½ hours to 9 hours. The expanded time allows the school to provide double periods of language arts and math without sacrificing a well rounded education. Saturday school and summer programs are also provided for targeted students who are struggling.

While the school year is still the traditional 180 days, YES Prep affords students the sort of life experiences often experienced students in more affluent communities. During the spring and summer school breaks, YES Prep organizes college tours for their students as well as opportunities to travel the globe, tackle wilderness adventures, and experience college campus life. These experiences create the desire and skills for life-long learning.

As a charter school network, YES Prep has greater autonomies over scheduling, staffing and budgets than many district schools. However, many traditional district schools have joined YES Prep as leaders in the expanded-time movement, breaking free from outdated farm and factory calendar to provide students with the time they need for success in today’s 21st century global economy. We hope to see more schools – charter and district – learn from the YES Prep and the other trailblazers!

How is your school working to eliminated achievement and opportunity gaps to get students to college and beyond?

One of KIPP’s original five organizational pillars is “more time spent learning.” KIPP middle school students spend an average of nine hours per day, for 192 days each year, in school, compared to a 6 ½ hour 180 traditional school calendar. This means that KIPP students, on average, spend nearly fifty percent more time in school than their peers in traditional district schools.

The evaluation is based on a multi-year study beginning in 2008 to understand how effective the KIPP model is for improving student achievement. KIPP signed on because, as Mike Feinberg shared, “we firmly believe that what you measure matters. It’s not enough to break out of the cage; you also have to show that what you’re doing outside the cage is working.”

Mathematica used two methods to draw comparisons: first, they compared KIPP students to their peers in district schools and baseline academic achievement; and second, they compared students who applied for the lottery, but were not accepted against those KIPP students who were accepted through the lottery system.

The study showed that KIPP produces achievement gains across all middle schools and academic subjects, the gains are significant enough to close race- and income-based achievement gaps, and it is not because the schools are recruiting the most able students.

Of course, the study showed room for improvement for KIPP, as KIPP schools generally had lower Special Education and English Language Learner populations and the gains in English and Social Studies were not as large as the Science and Math gains. However, these are small fixes compared to the larger gains seen in the report.

Mr. Feinberg summarized it well. “There are lessons here not just for KIPP, but also for our district counterparts in the communities we serve. School districts can adopt elements of our most successful schools by giving principals more autonomy to establish healthy school cultures and to expand the school day to include more time for learning math and reading without having to sacrifice the other core subjects or the co-curricular classes.”

Let’s hope that with the new findings, we will begin to see even more schools – district and charter – begin to expand learning time nationwide.

Last week, YES Prep Public Schools, a charter management organization in Houston, won the inaugural Broad Prize for Public Charter Schools from The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation. YES Prep was recognized as “the urban public charter school system that has demonstrated the most outstanding overall student performance and improvement in the nation in recent years while reducing achievement gaps for poor and minority students.”

The YES Prep model includes a longer school day and school year, after-school and weekend enrichment, on-boarding/induction for rising sixth graders, a more rigorous teacher selection and evaluation model, and structured parental involvement activities. The 10 middle and high schools serve more than 5,400 low-income kids who often enter middle school significantly below grade level. The schools are able to wipe out nearly every income and ethnic achievement gap and a high percentage of YES students pass difficult AP tests. Additionally, every YES graduate is admitted to a four-year college.n. YES Prep was recognized as “the urban public charter school system that has demonstrated the most outstanding overall student performance and improvement in the nation in recent years while reducing achievement gaps for poor and minority students.”

We are always looking for examples of successful expanded-time schools. Congrats to the students, teachers, and administrators of YES Prep on the great results you have been able to achieve!

We are honored to have  Marco Petruzzi, President and Chief Executive Officer of Green Dot Public Schools, as a TSC Signatory. The Green Dot model is based on setting high expectations for students, creating strong parent involvement, directing a significant amount of money to the classroom, keeping schools open on extended hours, and maintaining a safe learning environment, among other areas of emphasis.