Fairfax officials use school’s success to support return to shorter hours

“It’s absolutely amazing how it benefits their craft,” said Dade.

A strong principal, a culture of collaboration and a staffing formula that sends more teachers to needier schools: those factors contribute more to student achievement than extending time, Fairfax officials say.

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But former Graham Road principal Molly Bensinger-Lacy, Dade’s predecessor, said extra time can be crucial for beat-the-odds schools.

Under the extended-time calendar at Graham Road, a long summer vacation was replaced with shorter breaks throughout the year. But even during those breaks, teachers would offer catch-up and enrichment lessons. Attendance was optional, but the vast majority of kids showed up.

“Many people wanted to know what our silver bullets were,” Bensinger-Lacy said. “Certainly, extended learning time was one of them.”

Many researchers back that view.

Studies have shown that poor children tend to fall behind their middle-class peers in the summer. And during the school year, some students inevitably need more help to keep up.

“There’s no way to close the gap without additional learning time,” said Daniel Duke, a University of Virginia professor who studies schools that have made dramatic achievement gains.

Arlington County’s Barcroft Elementary uses a modified calendar, as do two Alexandria schools. Some D.C. public charter schools, such as those run by the national KIPP network, have also embraced extended class time.

In Fairfax, seven schools had the modified calendar, and 16 had full-day Mondays, when schools generally release students two hours early.

Eliminating those programs saved about $8.4 million a year. It’s still too soon to judge the long-term effects of that cut, and it’s difficult to pin changes in achievement on any one factor. But some advocates for poor and minority children say results of the most recent state tests raise warning flags.

Signs of slippage

In 2010, for example, all seven of the modified-calendar schools met achievement goals under the federal No Child Left Behind law. In 2011, after shifting to a standard calendar, only three schools met the goals.

Reading pass rates slipped at six of the seven schools.

“They were defying the odds before, and now you see this slippage,” said School Board member Sandy Evans (Mason). “That concerns me.”

Time remains a pressing issue at Graham Road.

Dade set aside $20,000 in federal Title I funds — allocated to schools with high poverty rates — to pay teachers to tutor the neediest children during the summer, before and after school and on Saturdays.

When school was dismissed one recent day, dozens of children streamed outside to the playground. Others stayed indoors.

Upstairs, a handful of sixth-graders memorized facts about Native Americans in preparation for the state social studies test. Third-graders practiced multiplying double-digit numbers.

Downstairs, second-grade teacher Katherine Rountree spent an hour reading with a handful of students. One of them was Orlando Hernandez Flores, 8, who spoke only Spanish when he arrived a year ago from Guatemala. He now communicates well in English and is an unequivocal fan of the after-school sessions.

“We do everything, like read books from the library,” he whispered one recent afternoon, grinning as if part of a conspiracy. “And we can read with the teacher.”

Rountree said that she has had to make difficult choices about how to spend the hours after school. She has a lot of kids who need extra literacy help. “I also have kids who can’t count,” she said. And all of them want to learn.

“We didn’t drown last year, and that is a huge feat for this school,” Rountree said. “It doesn’t mean modified calendar isn’t valuable. It just means we worked twice as hard.”