SITE SEARCH
SEE THE EVIDENCE
Find and compare the Evidence of Effectiveness Data from other PLC schools or districts like yours.
The Schedule Won’t Let Us Devote Time to Intervention
February 1, 2010
By Rick and Becky DuFour
The most effective school systems in the world ensure that all of their schools have a process in place to monitor each student’s learning on an ongoing basis and a systematic plan of intervention that provides a struggling student with additional time and support for learning (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). It certainly seems to make sense that any school that claims its mission is to help all students learn would have a plan for responding when some students don’t learn.
One of the critical questions all schools must address when they begin the PLC journey is “How will we respond when kids don’t learn?” We contend that every school should have a plan that guarantees students who are struggling to learn an essential skill or concept will receive additional time and support in a way that is timely, directive, and systematic. Furthermore, this assistance should not require the student to miss new direct instruction. Most of the educators with whom we have worked do not dispute our premise that a school that claims its mission is to help all students learn should actually have a coordinated plan in place for responding when some students don’t learn. Unfortunately, they go on to explain that “The schedule won’t allow it.”
This explanation has the benefit of demonstrating our good intentions—“We would love to intervene when kids do not learn”—at the same time it absolves us of responsibility—“Alas, it is simply impossible given our schedule.” Blame is assigned to an inanimate, abstract concept (the schedule), while people are exonerated for failure to act.
We find this position puzzling, and we offer these questions to educators across North America:
• Did you mean it when you said the purpose of your school or district is to help all students learn? Was that a sincere declaration of intent and priority or politically correct hyperbole?
• Do you recognize that some students will require more time and support for learning than others? We are unaware of any researcher who has concluded all students can learn if time and support are constants rather than variables in the learning process.
• Do you agree a school’s schedule should reflect its purpose and priorities?
• Have you created a schedule that ensures you have access to all students who experience difficulty in order to provide them with additional time and support for learning?
When we pose these questions, one at a time, to educators, it is disheartening to hear them say, “Yes, we are committed to helping all students learn; yes, we recognize some will need more time and support if they are to learn; yes, a school’s schedule should reflect its purpose and priorities; but, no, we do not have a system of intervention in place because the schedule won’t let us.” A school’s schedule should be regarded as a tool to further priorities rather than as an impediment to change. Our advice to educators is simple: Your schedule is not a sacred document. If your current schedule does not allow you to provide students with something as essential to their academic success as extra time and support for learning, you should change it!
The schools and districts listed under the “Evidence of Effectiveness” link on this site have all created schedules that not only allocate time for teachers to work in collaborative teams, but also provide time and support each day for students who need assistance. These schools rely on different schedules. For example, Adlai Stevenson High School has eight 50-minute periods per school day, with one of the periods reserved for lunch. Cinco Ranch offers a seven-period day with 30 minutes for lunch. Three Whittier Union high schools have six periods on Mondays, then alternate three periods on a block schedule Tuesday through Friday. Both Lakeridge Junior High School and Prairie Star Middle School operate a modified A/B block schedule, but their schedules are different in many ways. Jane Addams Junior High has a nine-period day. Boones Mill and Highland elementary schools’ schedules have some similarities, but they are not identical. Schedules can differ. However, schedules should (1) give school personnel access to students who are experiencing difficulty learning during the school day and (2) ensure students receive additional time and support for learning in ways that do not require them to miss new direct instruction.
It should come as no surprise that the “world’s best performing school systems” ensure that every school monitors the learning of each student on a timely basis and implements a systematic intervention plan to assist struggling students rather than let them fall behind (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). It’s time to acknowledge that if your school is not providing this level of support, it is not because the “schedule won’t let us;” it is because you have chosen not to.
Adapted from Raising the Bar and Closing the Gap (DuFour, DuFour, Eaker, & Karhanek)
© Solution Tree Press 2010
38 Responses to “The Schedule Won’t Let Us Devote Time to Intervention”
PLC TOOLS & RESOURCES
Download sample agendas and activities, choose from a variety of helpful links,
and more.
PLC LOCATOR
Find and compare statistics with other PLC schools.
FEEDBLITZ
Please enter your email address if you would like to be notified of new blog posts.
Subscribe to Feed
Add us to your personal page reader for another layer of convenience.
At my school we are given time for intervention in reading, but we have had to be creative in finding ways to provide intervention in math. Myself and two other teachers have for a year grouped our students together then divide them into three groups. I know this is not ideal but it has helped us. The top group is the largest and the teacher gives them enrichment. The middle group is slightly smaller. Our lower group is the smallest and we have parents that help the teacher work with that group so that there are two adults in the room. We present the lesson whole group to our class for fifteen minutes and then they go to their “Team Time” class. Students needing extra support are given that by having two adults work with them every day during math. Does anyone have another way that works for them?
Ketner226,
When PLC schools are not able to designate two intervention blocks per grade-level due to lack of time and human resources, they often designate some weeks and/or days for L.A intervention and others for math. Often, students who only need support in one area of the content are provided that support each day.
The schedules included in the Highland Elementary School entry under “Evidence of Effectiveness” on this site provides an example of both math and L.A. intervention blocks.
I would agree that school administration and teachers need to sit down together to come up with the most effective schedule. Some teachers are reluctant to changing their schedule, but this is where the teaching community needs to intervene. It might help to present those reluctant teachers with some hard evidence to show them that change is essential and change can be for the best. Not all students are going to get the information after one lesson, and spending additional time with certain children is crucial for learning.
My school definitely needs to come up with a more effective schedule that allows for collaboration among teachers. Since we do not have an appropriate schedule, many teachers feel isolated. The school’s schedule should reflect its purpose and priorities. If my school created a schedule that ensures that we have access to all students who experience difficulty in order to provide them with additional time and support for learning, I believe that we would have less students referred for special education.
I totally agree with this article. If the goal of schools and teachers is to make sure each student learns then we as a district should do whatever is nessessary to make this happen. At our school, we do have a plan in place to make sure we are able to put forth the effort to reach every student. First, it is worked into our schedule that throughout the year, once a month, we have an early release day that we as a teaching staff use as a staff development day. Here, we get together with our “teams” and discuss ways to make lessons better and discuss any problems we have with any of our students. Also, our school is broken into 4 communities. Each community has a designated lunch period. During this lunch period we can choose to have extra time with a group of students or to get together with our team and work on a lesson. As a teacher, our schedule also has a lunch and planning period built into it. This allows time to eat your lunch during that time and then have more time to work with students or teachers if need be. I think that schools need to have time alotted into the schedule to make sure we are getting maximum effort and knowledge to and from our students.
I agree with many points in this article. When a school/teacher blames the schedule for not having time it does need to be changed. We have to take responsibility for what our students are comprehending. There has to be a way to incorporated the much need time for our students. We can’t let the students continue to fall in between the cracks, or fall to the waste side. Our students need a confirmation for teachers that we know you may have a struggle with some things and we are here to help.
I agree with Pamela when she says, “it is time to change from doing things as usual and we should thrive to meet the needs of our students rather than the needs of our curriculums and schedules”. I am a sixth and eighth grade special needs teacher, and there are so many times when students are on a completely different level than our curriculum suggests. I would love to give them the important skills they need to get by in life, rather than just get them to pass a state test. Of course, I incorporate the main life skills into their content, but some students don’t have the capacity to get beyond that. Sometimes, It’s not fair to the students.
I strongly agree with this article. In the school that I currently teach we do not have the proper time to reteach a skill for students who who do not grasp the skill the first time. The pacing guide did not account for these students. As educators we are given alotted time to teach the standards necessary for students to be promoted to the next grade level. What happens with the students that did not grasped the standards the first time? Do I move on and risk my lower achieving students not meeting the standard on the state test? Then who is accountable?
Finding time and developing a schedule for intervention is only the beginning. My district has required that every school build in a common intervention time into their schedules. The problem is that principals have received mixed messages concerning how they are to use this time. Some have been told that this intervention time is strictly for literacy. Others have been told that they should alternate between literacy and math every other week. Also, many campuses don’t seem to have a plan concerning materials that will be used during intervention. Some simply grab the nearest test-prep booklet from the shelf while others have students playing “educational” games. So I am witnessing a situation where the time for intervention is available but the conversation concerning how to best utilize this time to positively impact student achievement is rather disjointed.
I am sure this article speaks to me as it does many other educators out there. One of the biggest challenges I face daily is trying to find enough time to “get it all done”. I am thrilled that my school has adopted a new program for progress monitoring our low performing students, however, when you have a classroom with 7 students whom you need to progress monitor weekly and pose interventions daily, when does the teaching of new core content take place? I find it almost humorous that we are required to follow suit with these new implementations, yet not provided with the time to do it effectively. Our system is backwards. “Do more with less” is the philosophy. Someone needs to be reminded that we are educators, not magicians. We can only do so much with the time we have. It would be beneficial for my school to have a block of time designated strictly for interventions, data collection, and progress monitoring. This way, on and above level students are given that block to expand their knowledge base in a group of peers of similar academic strength. Given this block of time would be a gift to each and every one of us as well as our students. We would be given the quality time to teach (which is rare enough), and our students would get the quality learning experience they deserve.
I definitely agree with this concern. Teachers barely have enough time to get any extra things in. I think we need time to collaborate with other teachers, to help with learning different strategies and procedures. Discussing concerns and issues with other teachers, sometimes helps not to feel lie you are the only one going through things. With teachers collaborating then this gives us more time to study on how to better our students and help them become life long learners. Maybe we can do more one on one time with struggling students, which to me many of them learn better when its one on one.
I’m now serving on a committee that will modify our high school’s bell schedule for next year so that it’ll incorporate some type of PLC / “work with struggling students” time. We use block scheduling. Is there anyone else who works at a school that has a block schedule but that incorporates this work time into it as well? I’ve been asked to bring some examples back to our next meeting (next week) of schools that have successfully done this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
Whitney,
The following link will take you to a document that describes several different secondary school schedules that are crafted to provide intervention to students during the school day and time for teams to collaborate. http://www.allthingsplc.info/pdf/tools/POI-interventionschedules.pdf Most of the schools named in this document are also on this site under “Evidence of Effectiveness” on the following link: http://www.allthingsplc.info/evidence/evidence.php
You can read more about them and other high schools included on the site. Feel free to contact any school on the site to request more information about their schedule and practices.
Our 6-8 grade middle school is looking to radically change our current schedule for the 2010-2011 school year. We are looking at extending our day and implementing 90 minute blocks (English and Reading; Math and Religion; Science and Social Studies) with an Advisory block in the morning, Enrichment and Academic Support in the middle of the day,and daily Physical Education and Exploratory classes at the end of the day. Any advice or input on the logistics of putting this together would be greatly appreciated. What works? What does not?
lsumme
For expert advice on the block schedule in middle schools, go to Evidence of Effectiveness link on the PLC blog and read up on Lakeridge in the Alpine Valley School District of Utah. Principal Garrick Peterson has helped the school win recognition as the “Best K-12 School in Utah” after moving to a block schedule and building in time for systematic intervention and support.
Rick DuFour
Mr. and Mrs. Dufour,
Our high school is about to pilot a schedule that includes 30 minutes most Monday’s for teacher collaboration and three 30-minute tutorials each week. We had a substantial debate about whether those tutorials should be targeted, meaning only those students who are struggling should attend them, or mandatory, meaning all students should attend. The mathematics and science departments were in favor of targeted tutorials, as we believed removing the students who neither need nor want extra help allows us to focus on the students who do need help, and having the carrot of a longer lunch or shorter school day could encourage otherwise unmotivated students. The English and social science departments argued for a mandatory tutorial, pointing out that all students can make use of extra time to do assignments and get help from teachers.
Furthermore, we ran into several structural problems with the targeted tutorial. Specifically, if we took time from lunch or lengthened the school day we would have to alter teachers’ contracts, and if we took time from class we would need to keep campus closed to maintain our level of instructional minutes, creating substantial supervisory issues.
In the end, these structural problems, combined with unwillingness on the part of the faculty to work longer without additional compensation, led us to adopt a mandatory tutorial without lengthening the school day or shortening lunch (each period was shortened by a few minutes), but there are those of us who still believe a targeted tutorial would be far more effective. Based on your experience, do you believe a mandatory tutorial can work, or is a targeted tutorial really the only proven strategy? If the latter, how have other schools overcome the supervisory and contractual problems?
Thank you very much for your time and assistance.
-Morgan Agnew
Terra Linda high school
AgnewM,
I have a good news and bad news response to your question. First of all, kudos to your school for attempting to carve out time for intervention and enrichment. Thirty minutes three times a week isn’t a lot of time for intervention, but it is a start. The bad news is, that what you are proposing isn’t intervention. It is three 30-minute study halls for all students, and I am not aware of any research of a correlation between mandatory study hall and improved student achievement.
I side with the math and science departments on this one. Tutorial time should be required of students who are not being successful, but should not be required of students who are meeting all expectations. Your plan is treating every student in the school the same – every student whether proficient or not, whether a freshmen or senior, whether completing work or not is following the same schedule. Intervention specifically sets out to differentiate the schedule for students and provide positive incentives for students who are being successful and systematic structures for additional time and support for students who are not. In trying to provide this service to the entire student body, including students who don’t need it, you will not be able to provide the focused, intensive support for the students who do. My prediction is that you will abandon this practice within 3 years and declare that systematic intervention doesn’t work, even though what you are proposing does not represent systematic intervention.
You don’t provide enough details about your schedule for me to offer suggestions, and I don’t know your state’s rules and regulations. I’m not clear on how you could find time for study halls but not time for targeted tutorials. I assume you are requiring kids to attend, not because you expect it to benefit them, but because you are trying to meet state mandates in instructional minutes. I question whether or not this does in fact meet the mandate since it is clearly not instructional time. I suggest you would be better off seeking a waiver from your state to reserve this time for targeted tutorials as part of an action research project to improve student learning. Most states are becoming more flexible if schools can demonstrate that they are getting better results.
I do know that in Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois we had no problem giving responsible upperclassmen free time and off-campus privileges and didn’t feel the need to put them in study halls. I encourage you to go to the evidence of effectiveness link on allthinsplc.info and do a search for high schools and middle schools. You’ll find over 50 schools that have faced the same challenges of contracts and minutes that were able to find creative solutions that allowed them to carve out time for intervention. You can go to the websites of those schools or contact the principals, you can get information on how each did it given the parameters they faced.
If you start with the assumption that the schedule you have must remain the same and now let’s provide intervention within it, you will probably fail. You have to start with an assumption that our schedule reflects our priorities, because it does. Right now, other priorities are driving the schedule. When helping all kids learn becomes a priority, you will make adjustments to your schedule because all of us recognize that all kids will not learn if time and support for learning are the same for all students.
Rick DuFour
The high school that I teach at came up with a solid intervention plan this year. We call it “Prep Intervention”. In our school, freshmen and seniors tend to get most of the attention. We have numerous interventions set up for freshmen, like on-campus lunch if falling a class, etc. However, sophomores and juniors tend to slip under the radar. This intervention is aimed at them. If there is any academic concern about a student, a teacher will recommend them to “Prep Intervention”. The teachers that have the same prep period will meet with this student and help in any way possible. It has been really successful so far, however, we do have some teachers that refuse to give up there “personal” time which is unfortunate. When and if we get all teachers on board, this will really help in preventing students fall between the cracks.
Joe Prior
At my school, we have what is called Extended Learning Time (ELT) during the first period of the day. During this time, students can receive remediation in either reading or math, based on their state test scores. There are some other ELTs that focus on regular or gifted students in science and social studies. This is a great first step for intervention, but sometimes I feel as though we could have more remedial ELTs. We tend to have a high population of students that are low in math and reading, but we can only have a certain number of students in a remedial setting, and we only have a few teachers for these classes. There is also after-school tutoring for the students, where they use two different computer programs to improve in reading and math. However, the programs are not aligned with the standards for their grade level, and I feel that the students need a teacher. Another school that I did my student teaching at had a schedule that I felt allowed for more student support. They had ELT in the morning during breakfast, they had a 45 minute lunch period which allowed for teachers to have “lunch and learn”, and they had an extra recess every Friday where failing students could receive extra help. Based on my experience there, I agree that the schedule has to be designed to benefit the students. My school has started this somewhat, but I feel that it can certainly improve.