Gov. Kate Brown is working to make good on her campaign pledge to extend Oregon’s notoriously short school year to the national benchmark of 180 days, the single most expensive item on her list of school upgrades she’d bankroll with a promised $2 billion corporate tax hike.

But a panel composed largely of school district superintendents, assembled at Brown’s request to guide the state in making the switch to a longer school year, came back with a different take: Think long and hard before you force districts to lengthen the school year and, whatever you do, do not mandate 180 days.

Brown’s spokeswoman said Tuesday that the governor is undaunted in her drive to ensure that all Oregon students get a longer school year.

Brown’s takeaway from the work group report, spokeswoman Lisa Morawski said, is that its members feel strongly that extending the school year alone won’t improve results – a position the governor agrees with. That’s why she’s also working to come up with money for more preschool, smaller class sizes, additional career-technical courses and improved teacher effectiveness, Morawski said.

In their report, work group members spell out numerous objections to lengthening the school year. Small rural districts are doing well financially and academically with four-day weeks that will never add up to 180 days of class. Adding plentiful extra instruction such as summer school or after-school tutoring for students who need it most would yield a bigger payoff than adding two weeks for everyone. Making students’ school experiences better, not longer, should take priority.

But their report, issued earlier this month, also contains faulty or misleading information. It casts doubts on whether Washington students get, on average, two more weeks of school each year than Oregon students do. The report says Washington schools count activities toward instruction time that Oregon schools don’t, including all the time that teachers spend undergoing on-the-job training.

In actuality, Washington schools aren’t allowed to count any teacher professional development time as instruction, whereas Oregon schools can count 30 hours of it toward the required hours of instruction. Washington schools are allowed to count recess and the passing time between classes as part of the instructional day – but Washington’s much higher requirements for the number of hours of instruction mean Washington students do receive the equivalent of weeks more education each year.

The report also indicated there is no research that shows the value of lengthening the school year, saying there has been only one extensive empirical review and its author concluded “it’s mostly a theoretical debate based on personal beliefs.” In fact, that study’s official summary says “extending school time can be an effective way to support student learning, particularly for students more at risk of school failure” and “the strongest research designs (of studies examining the effect of a longer school year) produced the most consistent positive results.”

Oregon Department of Education spokesman Marc Siegel did not respond to questions Tuesday about the report’s characterization of the study’s findings.

The typical Oregon student was offered 170 days of school during the 2017-18 academic year. Only two students in the state had an 180-day year, state records show.

Trailing national norms

Oregon has long had one of the shortest school years in the nation, and some parents feel strongly that their children should have as much school time as those in other states, said Oregon PTA President Scott Overton.

But the work group, which included just two parents, found almost nothing it liked about a longer school year. The group also included 22 superintendents or other high-level district administrators, two students, representatives from two employee unions and five student advocacy groups and a few other people.

“Extending the school year to 180 days or the instructional hour equivalent (1,080 hours) across all school districts will do little to improve student achievement,” their report asserts.

The typical Oregon student was offered 170 days of class last school year, an analysis by the Oregon Department of Education found. About 5 percent of students, mostly in remote rural school districts where the school week consists of four extra-long days instead of five to save money and time used on transportation, had school years of about 140 to 150 school days.

Oregon doesn’t mandate how many school days districts must offer. Instead, the state requires at least a certain number of hours of instruction – 900 for elementary and middle school students and 990 for high schoolers. Parent-teacher conferences, up to 30 hours of teacher training, time spent on academically related field trips and up to 60 hours of recess for students in third grade and younger all count as instructional hours.

Many other states that define the school year in hours not days, including Washington, require 1,080 hours of instruction either in all grades or just in high school. Washington requires 1,000 hours of instruction in kindergarten through eighth grade.

Opinions vary in Portland

In Portland Public Schools, the state’s largest school district, a coalition of parents made a concerted push several years ago to get more instructional time for high school students by granting students full academic schedules. The coalition succeeded in ending the district’s practice of requiring most students to have part-time schedules or to take part in large study halls not led by certified teachers.

The Portland parents also persuaded the state Board of Education to enact a requirement, from which it has since backpedaled, that more than 80 percent of every high school’s students be scheduled for a full academic day.

Lisa Zuniga, a parent who was active in the push to get Portland students more instructional time, said she likes the idea of adding instructional time. The district currently offers students 173 class days.

“Adding a week could be a game-changer, even more so if all students (by this I mean high schoolers) maximize their time in the classroom,” she said. But, she added, that “could be a challenge given the past culture of PPS.”

Zuniga said she’d like to see the district adopt policies and curricula that set students up for success in college, such as requiring four years of math for high schoolers across the board.

But the leader of Portland’s teachers union says lobbying for a 180-day calendar or requiring a minimum of 1,080 of instructional hours isn’t anywhere near a top priority.

“Our general position is that we want a better year before a longer year, so it’s not at all that we’re not interested in a longer school year, but we do not want more days the way we’re experiencing them now,” Portland Association of Teachers President Suzanne Cohen said.

And the school board chair, Rita Moore, goes even further, saying she would oppose a state directive to add days or hours to the school year – even with the state paying hundreds of millions more dollars to fund it. She called lawmakers “unqualified to make those decisions” because they know so little about the realities in Oregon schools these days.

But fellow board member Julia Brim-Edwards is on board with lengthening Oregon’s school year to match the national benchmark.

Cohen, the union president, said Portland teachers would prefer to invest in mental health supports, bolster arts offerings in schools, reduce class sizes and minimize the number of classrooms that blend fourth- and fifth-graders in the district.

“Do we want a longer school year? Of course. But not in isolation,” she said.

Cohen also said increasing minimums for instructional hours or classroom days would lead to squabbling over definitions. Do advisory periods count? What about passing periods?

“I would want to caution against penny-pinching hours,” she said.

Cohen said she regularly hears from parents who remember school years complete with arts offerings in elementary school and myriad electives during their middle- and high-school years who want their kids to have the same. Every Portland school currently has at least a part-time art teacher thanks to the city’s voter-approved arts tax.

“Let’s have a school day that reflects what Oregonians expect,” Cohen said.

Moore, the school board chair, said that a 180-day school calendar isn’t just a low priority for her. It isn’t even a proposal she said she’s willing to entertain until legislators staff schools with counselors and teacher’s aides, among other things.

She bristled at carrying out mandates from Salem when, she said, legislators haven’t been “paying attention to conditions on the ground” for years.

“I would say a) they’re unqualified to make those decisions and b) 198 school districts across the state are not going to have the same needs,” she said.

Moore regularly brings up a 2018 education department study that found the state’s K-12 schools would need about $1 billion more per year to get nearly all students to meet state academic benchmarks and raise graduation rates to 95 percent. She legislators should focus on shoring up funding for 170-day school years before they mandate more hours or days.

“We have needs across the board that have gone unfulfilled for 30 years,” she said. “We need to buy books. We need more librarians and specialists. We have 100-year-old buildings we need to upgrade. We have needs all over the place.”

Brim-Edwards, who helped lead the push to increase instructional time for the district’s high school students, said she doesn’t see a reason the state can’t take both approaches.

“If we’re truly going to prepare students for college, career and life, we need to optimize the current time they now have in the classroom and add to it,” she said. “It’s not a zero-sum game at all.”

Brim-Edwards said she’s heard from teachers and students who say they don’t have time to cover all the material during a given term. That’s why she supports the governor’s plan, regardless of the price tag that comes with adding another two weeks to the calendar.

Members of the Joint Interim Committee on Student Success, shown here at a student safety roundtable in Bend, toured the state in spring, are now grappling with questions about whether to award school district hundreds of millions of dollars to lengthen the school year and how to ensure the money is used as lawmakers wish.

High costs

District spokesman Harry Esteve said every additional instructional day would cost Portland schools $2.3 million. That puts the price of adding seven days to the current calendar at about $16 million.

Statewide, legislative staffers have estimated paying for a 180-day year would take another $560 million in the state’s two year budget to cover the costs, primarily salary increases for teachers and other district employees.

“Yes, it’s expensive but it’s an investment that needs to be made,” Brim-Edwards said. We’re so far behind.”

Lawmakers have yet to take any votes on whether they favor a longer school year nor how they will pay for it. Subcommittees of the Joint Committee on Student Success are grappling with those topics, however.

In their report, members of the governor’s task force on instructional time were clear in their conclusion: Local school district leaders should be given wide latitude to choose what is best for their students and communities, and lengthening Oregon’s short school year should not be a priority.

“There are higher leverage and more cost-effective strategies to improve student achievement and close opportunity gaps,” they wrote.

-- Betsy Hammond

betsyhammond@oregonian.com

-- Eder Campuzano

ecampuzano@oregonian.com