Research shows that public school students spend vastly different amounts of time in class each day, depending on where they live. In some states, a student can spend up to a year and a half more in the classroom than peers elsewhere. A new study reveals Maine is in the bottom five states for school day length.
At Lewiston high school, the bell rings at 7:45 a.m., but some students say they get up much earlier to make it there on time.
"I wake up at like 4:30 a.m. to go to the gym and then I'll leave my house around 7:20," Taylor Jean said.
Senior Taylor Jean spends 6 hours a day in school, for 175 days a year....as do most high schoolers in Maine. But that is significantly less than what's required in other states across the country.
"The school day that you have is not actually necessarily the same as the school day that somebody has in the district one over and it's definitely not the school day that you have when you cross state lines," said Stanford University researcher Sarah Novicoff.
Novicoff is the co-author of a study on instructional time and its effect on students. She said average U.S. schools are in session for 6.9 hours per day, almost a full hour more than in Maine. And Maine doesn't actually require a minimum school day length. So within her 6 hours Taylor Jean can have multiple study halls and even leave school grounds...
"I have two study halls, second and third period. And with privileges, you get to go home for your study halls, so I don't have to be at school for second and third period," Jean said.
Novicoff and her colleague at Brown, Matthew Kraft, found that substantial differences in instructional time can lead to lower test scores. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, Maine students last year had the lowest average math and reading scores in nearly three decades, and are performing significantly below the national average. But Novicoff insists the correlation between testing performance and time spent at school is not that simple.
"It really does matter when the time is added and how it's added in terms of the results that it produces. It's not quite a formula," Novicoff said.
Novicoff said those extra hours don't help students and lengthening the day isn't always the best strategy to increase student's time in school.
"If you push especially young students for additional hours past the typical sort of seven hour day that we find in the United States, if you start to push students to eight, that additional hour maybe isn't quite as valuable," said Novicoff.
Some educators said learning outcomes have more to do with the quality of instruction than with time requirements.
"I've seen some teachers get more done in 10 minutes than other teachers can in an hour," Sharon Gallant said.
Gallant, a newly retired teacher with more than 30 years in the classroom said extending the school day in Maine would be problematic given the long distances students have to travel.
"Being a rural state really presents some funky challenges. And I think about, like, even for me, in some of the outer ranges of, I taught in MSAD 11, some kids are on a school bus for over an hour," Gallant said.
In fact, some policy makers are proposing to give high school students a later start each day. State Senate President Mattie Daughtry has introduced legislation nearly every year for the last decade to push back high school start times by 45 minutes. She said it would address chronic sleep deficits that affect learning.
"Teenagers have a delayed circadian rhythm, and that waking up a teenager in this point of your life is akin to shaking an adult awake at three in the morning. It leads to all sorts of issues with academic performance, safety, driving when tired and just generally, is not healthy for students," Daughtry said.
Daughtry said the change might lengthen the school day, but isn't meant to reduce the time students spend in class. Researcher Novicoff, meanwhile, said there are a number of takeaways from her study that school administrators should consider.
"I would say a big takeaway from this is not only to think about expanding time when you can and when you have the funding to do so, but also to protect the time you currently have," Novicoff said.
Taylor Jean said though she likes her schedule, she does see value in pushing start times back.
"I think a lot of people, like a lot of my friends, would like, really, like, if our normal start time is like 8:20 a.m.," Taylor Jean said.
Daughtry will reintroduce her bill again this legislative session. There are currently no organized efforts in Maine to extend the school day or year.
