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Extending Learning
VUE Number 16, Summer 2007

David Cicilline orange star Audio Clip 2
Mayor, Providence, Rhode Island

There’s a lot of interest now in extending the school day, particularly for low-performing students. Is after school a way to extend the school day by other means? [2 minutes, 3 seconds]
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TEXT VERSION:

I’ve avoided using the term “extending the school day” because I think it’s more than that. I think there is no question we have to develop ways to extend instruction time and time on task, in the classroom, with a teacher. There is no question about that.

But we also have to extend the day for which the community is responsible for the healthy development of our kids, from earlier in the morning before they begin school to five or six o’clock at night when they go home for dinner. And that is in additional academic programs, it’s in additional recreational activities, and it’s in different highquality out-of-school-time programs.

I think this is a very powerful way to begin to change the culture in which we think about our responsibility to kids. Right now, in American public education, the way we think about our responsibility as educators or as school systems is from eight in the morning to two or three in the afternoon, whatever the school day is. But I really believe that it is about extending the day or the time period for which we are collectively responsible for kids, and out-of-school time is one important piece.

The particular value in Providence has been that we have been successful in bringing substantial resources to this work — obviously, from the Wallace Foundation, from Bank of America, from many partners — so that it is not relying on the school district and the traditional sources of educational funding to support this additional time for kids.

But I think it is about changing the whole way we think about our community and our city and our local government and about state and federal government’s responsibility for the healthy development of our kids. And it is certainly a way to begin to change attitudes about out-of-school time. Unfortunately, people still think of after-school programs as a nice luxury — it would be great to have if you could do it, but it’s not a core responsibility of a community or of a city government — but I think it is.