At the beginning of last school year, 46 schools across Dallas ISD implemented the Additional Days School Year (or ADSY), an opportunity to increase instructional time on elementary campuses by up to 30 days with new state funding. Now, those Dallas ISD elementary schools are beginning to see promising results, and momentum is growing across the state for this strategy.
The Impact Of Additional Days
The schools originally adopted the extended school year to help address “summer slide,” the trend in which students – especially those experiencing economic instability – lose the academic gains they’d made during a school year over the course of a long summer break. With the coronavirus pandemic severely curtailing access to instruction for months throughout 2020, this strategy became even more important to ensure students did not fall further behind.
Of the 46 Dallas ISD schools, 41 adopted an intersession calendar that adds five “intersession” weeks to the school year for a total opportunity of 194 instructional days, which is 19 days more than the base calendar. During the intersession weeks, up to 50% of students at participating campuses come to the school for targeted enrichment and academic support. Meanwhile, five Dallas ISD schools adopted a Full Year Redesign calendar that extends the school year to start at the beginning of August and end in late June for all students, teachers, and staff.
Based on initial results, the district is seeing promising results. The extended year campuses saw greater growth from 2021 to 2022 than campuses that only offered 175 instructional days.
The growth is encouraging but not altogether surprising. As EdWeek reported: “Decades of research suggest that more, well-used time in the classroom correlates with higher achievement across student demographic groups.”
We look forward to seeing the middle of the year MAP test data for these Dallas ISD campuses to get an updated look at their growth.
Community-Driven Implementation
Only schools where the principal, teachers, and families answered on a survey that they were strongly in favor of the extended year calendar moved forward with the alternative calendar. Dallas ISD deserves credit for letting the community drive the implementation.
Even after implementation, Dallas ISD is continuing to engage with staff, teachers and families about their experience. A family and middle school student survey administered in June 2022 and teacher survey administered in January 2022 identified:
– 77% of families said they believed School Day Redesign was a positive opportunity for their students;
– On Intersessional campuses, 85% of teachers believe intersession weeks have been beneficial and 86% of students feel more prepared for their schoolwork.
Dallas ISD is in the process of collecting more feedback from principals, teachers, students and families.
The Dallas ISD Board of Trustees in February will decide whether to continue with the extended year models beyond 2022-2023.
Spreading What Works Across The State
School systems across the state are starting to see the value of implementing the program that adds extra days to the school year.
In addition to Dallas ISD, seven elementary campuses across the state implemented a fully redesigned school calendar in the 2021-2022 school year with the support of the ADSY Planning & Execution Program (ADSY PEP), a Texas Education Agency program supported by the Texas Impact Network. These campuses saw an average growth in their accountability rating of over 15 points, five times the statewide average of three points, which every campus met or exceeded.
By visiting Commit’s HB3 Implementation Dashboard and viewing the ADSY tab, you can see all of the school systems implementing ADSY across Texas.
To learn more about ADSY and ADSY PEP, visit the Texas Impact Network and watch a short video on Aldine ISD’s experience redesigning the calendar on two campuses. Also visit this Dallas ISD website to see the schools implementing an extended year calendar.
