Courtesy of Citizen Schools

Claudia Borquez, left, and Alexis Trejo participate in a robotics "apprenticeship" at Elmhurst Customs Prep in Oakland.

For the first fourth dimension in the U.S., more district schools than charter schools are expanding the school day or year, according to a recent report. But the national trend does non appear to be catching on in California.

About ane,200 traditional schools compared with almost 800 lease schools offered either a longer school day or year in 2013-xiv, according to Learning Fourth dimension in America: Trends to Reform the American Schoolhouse Calendar.

But in California, charter schools still far outnumber traditional schools in offering expanded days or year: 102 lease schools compared with 34 district schools, according to the report, which was released Apr 16 past the National Middle on Fourth dimension & Learning, a nonprofit advocacy and research organization based in Boston. Of the district schools, more than a third were in San Francisco Unified, according to the study's database.

Many charter school organizations take traditionally required longer school days, which has been much less common with schoolhouse districts.

In California, lease schools still far outnumber traditional schools in offering expanded days or year: 102 lease schools compared with 34 district schools, according to a study from the National Center on Time & Learning.

A school had to offer at least seven hours of education each day and have at least 30 additional minutes each twenty-four hour period than nearby schools or require at least 10 actress days of school during the yr compared to neighboring schools to exist considered an "expanded-time school" by the center.

California requires schools to offering a minimum of about three hours for kindergarten, about five hours for grades 1-eight, and six hours a day for grades nine-12. Most California schools are open 180 days a twelvemonth.

"Nosotros were surprised at the rate of growth among district schools," said Blair Chocolate-brown, vice president for communications at the national centre. In 2012-xiii, she said, 56 percent of expanded-fourth dimension schools were charters. By 2013-fourteen, 61 pct were commune schools.

Federal policy is function of the reason for the upward tendency, according to the report, specifically the $3.5 billion invested in the Schoolhouse Improvement Grant plan. That program encouraged increased learning time equally a strategy to improve low-performing schools and "has helped to drive a policy tendency that many districts and states have embraced," according to the center.

In one example, a School Improvement Grant jump-started an expanded learning programme at Elmhurst Community Prep, a centre school in a low-income neighborhood in Oakland, in 2010-11. After the grant funding concluded, the school and its nonprofit partners were able to keep the ix-hour school day for three days each week by cobbling together other grants and relying on volunteers.

The National Center on Fourth dimension & Learning report also chronicled the continued growth of expanded learning programs. During the past two years, the number of students in these programs has near doubled from 520,000 in 2011-12 to 1.i million in 2013-14, with most of the students living in low-income urban communities.

"We were excited to cross the 1 1000000 threshold," Brown said. "In one case we'd crossed that threshold, we thought OK, this is actually starting to happen."

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