More learning time would benefit N.M. kids, study says

New Mexico could leverage federal dollars to expand learning time — be it extra days in the school year or extra hours in the school day — for its public school students, and that would improve their performance, a new study says.

“It’s not rocket science: Kids do better with more time [in school],” said Charles Sallee, deputy director of the Legislative Finance Committee.

Sallee and Jeannie Oakes, a senior fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and professor emeritus at UCLA, gave a presentation on learning time to the committee Thursday at the state Capitol.

Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have often said that it is difficult for cash-poor New Mexico, which is largely dependent on the oil and gas industry, to increase investment in public education without harming another industry. But, Sallee said, there are “lots of pots of money” — as much as $400 million in federal aid, for example — that the state could “blend and braid” together to pursue some of these expanded-

learning-time options.

The committee chairwoman, Rep. Patrica Lundstrom, D-Gallup, told Sallee she wants his office to put together a formula for accessing that federal money and present it to the committee when it meets again next month.

The report came two years after another Legislative Finance Committee study found that nearly a third of classroom instruction time is lost during the school year because of late starts, teacher and student absences, parent-teacher conferences and preparations for standardized tests.

That loss of time hurts student performance, that report said.

Among other points, the new report said low-income students might experience a 6,000-hour learning gap by middle school because high-income families can afford to send their children to private pre-K programs, summer camp and after-school activities that increase their knowledge.

“Six thousand hours is a lot,” Oakes told the committee members.

As a result, low-income students are more likely to falter in school, she and Sallee said.

“When they come to school behind, they stay behind,” Sallee said.

Among the report’s suggestion was to use state funds to offer more 3- and 4-year-olds pre-K classes to better prepare them for the K-12 curriculum, and continue to expand K-3 Plus and K-5 Plus programs that offer 25 more days of instructional time during summer.

New Mexico law requires school districts to allocate at least 990 hours of instruction time for elementary schools during the year and 1,080 hours for secondary schools.

While school districts have some flexibility to increase the school day or shorten the yearround schedule, the state average is about 180 days of school.

But Sallee said various interruptions, from testing and daily loudspeaker announcements to social challenges such as absenteeism and hunger, means “we’re closer to 175 days.”