A growing practice nationwide, expanded learning time (ELT) is a practice that entails increasing the length of the school day for all students, with the goal of improving student outcomes, especially in low-performing
schools. 

Boston Public Schools (BPS) has been implementing ELT as an improvement strategy in low-performing schools since 2006, and has recently drastically expanded these efforts, with schools receiving wide latitude for program implementation.

BPS is collaborating with AIR to study its ELT program types, with the goal of understanding the impact of ELT on student academic and behavioral outcomes as well as program cost-effectiveness. This report describes the results from the first year of the study, which sought to identify common uses of time in the 46 schools implementing ELT in school year 2015–16 as well as perceived strengths and common challenges.

Key Findings

• The district lacks centralized information about schools’ time usage, a potential barrier to understanding ELT implementation.
• The amount of time added varies by ELT policy and funding type, with no single districtwide system. Allocation of time also varies, with some relationship to instructional focus.
• The greatest reported strength of ELT—teacher satisfaction about its potential for student outcomes—is at odds with the greatest reported challenges—lack of teacher buy-in and teacher burnout.