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The issue of high school reform has received national attention during the first part of the 21st century. One idea brought forth in this restructuring effort has been the desire to create high schools with smaller student populations. However, in an era of tight budgets, where resources are not always available to build more schools, educators have explored the possibility of dividing existing large high schools into smaller units. This restructuring approach has many titles, but is frequently referred to as a Smaller Learning Community (SLC). Since 2000, the federal government has pledged $245 million to schools willing to create SLCs. This research has studied the schools in Florida that have received the federal implementation grant and have established SLCs. The 39 Florida high schools that were awarded the federal grant in 2000, 2001, and 2002 served as the population for this study.
Since the 2012/13 school year Florida law has required the 100 lowest performing elementary schools in reading to extend the school day by one hour to provide supplemental reading instruction. In 2014 the law was broadened to include the 300 elementary schools with the lowest reading performance. A previous study of the state's first two cohorts of 100 lowest performing schools found that observed growth in school reading performance after one to two years of implementing the extended school day policy did not exceed what would have been expected because of natural variation (Folsom et al., 2016). The current study follows up on that study by describing the location, demographic characteristics, and school reading performance of the 300 lowest performing schools and analyzing how the lowest performing schools implemented the extended school day policy (for example, the methods used to add the extra hour, staffing, and delivery of instruction). As with Folsom et al. (2016), the current study was based on a request from the Regional Educational Laboratory Southeast Improving Literacy Alliance and Improving Low-Performing Schools Alliance--both of which have Florida Department of Education administrators as members. Based on publicly available data and survey and interview data collected by the Florida Department of Education, the study found: (1) The lowest performing elementary schools were located in 31 of Florida's 65 school districts and in all five regions of the state. The lowest performing elementary schools were smaller on average than other elementary schools and enrolled a larger proportion of racial/ethnic minority students and students eligible for the federal school lunch program. Ninety-nine percent of the lowest performing elementary schools were Title I schools; (2) On average, the school reading performance of the lowest performing elementary schools was 1.8 standard deviations below that of other elementary schools at the end of 2013/14 (the year they were identified as lowest performing) and 1.5 standard deviations below that of other elementary schools at the end of 2014/15 (after implementing the extended school day policy for one or more years); (3) The elementary schools that implemented the extended school day policy reported using a variety of strategies such as increasing reading instruction time each day, increasing staff, providing professional development for teachers, and providing instruction in the extra hour that differed from instruction during the rest of the day; and (4) Participants identified indirect benefits of implementation, including perceived student gains. Interviewees attributed these gains not to the extra hour of instruction but to improvements that occurred in conjunction with it, such as professional development and curricular and pedagogic changes. However, the empirical analyses could not demonstrate whether student gains actually occurred. Barriers to implementation identified by interviewees included lack of resources and issues around logistical planning, such as short timelines. The following are appended: (1) Data and methodology; (2) Florida Department of Education compliance survey and structured interview protocol; (3) Supplemental tables of school characteristics, school reading performance, and survey responses; and (4) Supplemental statistical tests of significance for school characteristics and implementation of extended school day policy in 2014/15. [For the previous study, "School Reading Performance and the Extended School Day Policy in Florida. REL 2016-141," see ED566657.].