At a dozen large high schools across Portland and Hillsboro, the daily bell schedules debuting for 14,000-plus students this week are radically different from last year's.

They cut back on assemblies and tutoring time, trim minutes from lunch and passing time, and discontinue late starts that allowed teachers to plan together. All that is to squeeze in just one thing: Extra minutes of class.

The goal: To comply with a longstanding state requirement that every high school course must meet for at least 130 hours.

Every Portland high school fell short last year, some by five hours or more. When a group of parents complained, Oregon schools chief Rob Saxton ordered Portland officials to fix the problem right away – and told all other Oregon high schools to do the same.

The idea is that teachers should have adequate time to cover all the material, and cover it deeply enough, that students who pass U.S. history, Algebra 2 or junior English end up with all the skills and knowledge they need for college or a good job. Currently, many students who graduate from Oregon schools have to pay to take non-credit remedial classes when they get to college, particularly in math.

How local schools are meeting 130-hour requirement

Adding time

Portland

’s nine high schools

Hillsboro'

s four high schools

Not meeting this year*

Beaverton

’s nine high schools

North Clackamas'

three high schools

Tigard

and

Tualatin

high schools

David Douglas

High School

Lake Oswego

and

Lakeridge

high schools

Already meeting

Gresham

and

Barlow

high schools**

Reynolds

High

West Linn

and

Wilsonville

high schools

Oregon City

High School

* All got a one-year extension from the state, except David Douglas, which will ask soon

** Seniors must attend an additional week this year

But educators at about half of the high schools in the Portland area have pushed back, saying it's unworkable for them to rewrite their schedules over one summer. In many cases, they question whether adding a few hours per course is worth the trouble.

David Douglas Superintendent Don Grotting says the 90 minutes David Douglas High devotes to teacher collaboration in place of class time each week are worth the tradeoff. His school has no plans to meet the 130-hour rule this year, he said.

"We think that teacher time has allowed us to do pretty well," he said, a claim backed by strong graduation and college-going rates for a district where most of the students are low income.

At Grant High in Portland, students now have just 38 minutes from bell to bell for lunch, and one of two weekly half-hour tutorial periods is gone. In addition, the Portland school board lengthened the the school year by two days.

Grant senior Sofie Sundberg thinks the push to extend classes to 93 minutes on alternating days will backfire as students feel too pressured. "There needs to be a happy medium," she said.

In Hillsboro, where principals crafted a uniform schedule for all four high schools to pack in more class time, officials are hoping the added teaching time translates into better student achievement. But Matt Smith, executive director of secondary schools, says he's unsure the added time will outweigh what's being lost.

At Hillsboro High, a cherished period that allowed students to meet with the same teacher or other adult for 30 minutes a month all four years to get advice was axed. At Century High, two half-hour periods that allowed students to get extra help from any teacher and still catch the bus home are gone.

"I see both sides of a coin on this one," Smith said. "We want kids in school with great teachers because teachers make a difference in kids' lives." But is it better for them to be with a teacher in class than for an advisory or tutorial period? "That's a tricky question to answer," Smith says.

Nationally, there is little consensus that 130 hours, or any other number, is the magic length for a high school course. Most states don't specify. Only a handful of states besides Oregon require that much, including Alabama and Georgia, which both require more. The College Board doesn't offer any guidelines on how many hours an Advanced Placement course should last.

Many experts advocate adding learning time to a school's schedule, particularly for low-income students who rarely get music lessons, museum trips or other enrichment away from school. But they say adding those types of experiences plus internship-like exposure to careers is more important than simply adding more time to each course.

They also say schools would do well to examine how they use time rather than simply do things the same year after year. Did Portland's Franklin High students really need 10 minutes between classes, as they had last year? Is it really too stringent to limit Grant High to one 42-minute assembly per month?

Smart schools that add time make sure to do three things with it, according to Tiffany Miller, associate director for school improvement at the Center for American Progress: "More time for core academics. More time for enrichment. And more time for teachers to collaborate and plan."

Oregon has less than the national average of all three in many cases because the school year is so shorter. Most states require at least 180 days, and some require more. Oregon requires high schools to be in session just 960 hours a year – an amount most districts dole out in 170 to 175 days. Neighboring Washington, by contrast, will require 1,080 hours, or 13 percent more teaching time than Oregon, starting next year.

Oregon's 130-hours-per-course rule is harder for schools to meet than the one requiring 960 hours, which can include assemblies, parent-teacher conferences and other non-class time.

Before this year, however, a minority of high schools already included at least 130 hours per course. Those include West Linn and Wilsonville high schools plus Gresham, Barlow and Reynolds in east Multnomah County. All offer just six or seven classes per term, not eight, as is more typical.

Reaching 130 hours is particularly difficult for schools that use an eight-period schedule with four classes per day on alternating days.

When districts with eight-period schedules, including Beaverton, North Clackamas, Tigard-Tualatin and Lake Oswego, asked the state to give them an extra year to extend their courses to 130 hours, the state Board of Education readily agreed. But board members were adamant that the schools comply by next school year.

The rules could change before that mandate takes effect, however.

The board has convened a task force to study both the 960- and 130-hour requirements and recommend changes. The group is considering how much minutes matter and how much say the state should have when it comes to the length of a course or the school year.

The panel includes principals, school board members, parents and teachers – and they disagree. "Definitely some people say we need more instructional time for Oregon," said Cindy Hunt, the Oregon Department of Education lawyer helping run task force meetings. "There are also some who say districts need more flexibility."

In Portland, some high school students think adults are wrong to focus on lengthening class time without digging deeper to see how the time is used.

"It's hard enough to sit through class for an hour anyway," said Franklin High senior Michael Van Sant. "An hour and 34 minutes is ridiculous."

Franklin High junior Kaia Brunso said that even before classes were lengthened, "Honestly, a lot of the time we had free time during class." Teachers know they can only effectively pound so much information into teenage brains in one sitting, she and her friends said. During longer classes, "There is a lot of dead time."

-- Betsy Hammond