Parents at King School Favor Longer Day

Parents at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School, one of two Cambridge primary schools that instituted an eight-hour class day last year, hold overwhelmingly positive opinions of the extra instruction time, according to a school survey.

The survey of parents at the King found that 87 percent of parents “feel that their children are achieving more academically” as a result of the longer days, and that 77 percent “felt the expanded day had a positive impact on their families’ lives.”

The results stand in stark contrast to a district-wide parent survey in June that found that parents opposed extending the school day from six to eight hours by a nearly two-to-one margin. (The latter survey did not disaggregate data for the two schools that have added class time, the King and the Fletcher-Maynard Academy.)

A full 92 percent of parents at the King felt that the school had met its “objectives for the expanded school day.”

Most of the objectives dealt with the addition of curricula designed to promote “active-learning” and the introduction of electives. Among other things, the King has used the two extra hours to add “Literacy Collaborative,” a program that infuses reading and writing into the broader curriculum, as well as 60 to 90 minutes of “hands-on math” and 30 minutes of daily Mandarin instruction from junior kindergarten onward.

The survey also found that 71 percent of parents thought their children were “not too tired” as a result of the longer day, an initial fear of some parents.

For the past several years the King and the Fletcher-Maynard, the two smallest of Cambridge's 12 primary schools, have been among the district's lower performing when measured by state standardized test scores.

From 2002 to 2005, the Fletcher-Maynard scored last among Cambridge schools in achievement on both the mathematics and English language arts tests, while the King scored second to last in math and fourth from the bottom in English, according to an audit report released last year by the Massachusetts Department of Education.

Massachusetts has been at the center of the movement to add instructional time to the school day as an experiment to improve achievement in lower-performing schools, according to The New York Times. Governor Deval L. Patrick '78 has allocated $6.5 million in state funds toward experimenting with longer class days. So far, 10 schools in the commonwealth—including the two in Cambridge—have used state funding to add instructional time.

The results of the King survey were provided to The Crimson by Massachusetts 2020, an educational reform group led by former gubernatorial candidate Christopher F. O. Gabrieli '81 that has pushed for expanding the school day and is providing technical assistance to schools that are doing so.

Surveys conducted by Mass. 2020 at three other schools—located in Boston, Fall River, and Worcester—found similarly strong parental support for longer class days.

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.