Over 200 educators, from across the country, gathered at NERD this past weekend for the second annual Citizen Schools’ Expanded Learning Time Summit, which featured presentations by, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Citizen Schools CEO Eric Schwarz, and Peter Gorman of News Corp. 
Founded in Boston in 1995, Citizen Schools’ key mission is to bring more time, more talented individuals (teachers and professionals), and more relevant learning opportunities to middle-school students from low-income neighborhoods to expose those students with opportunities, that they otherwise, may not have had.
One of the many ways that Citizen Schools fulfills this mission is through their Expanded Learning Time (ELT) program. The ELT program extends the traditional learning day by three hours and provides further enrichment and instruction for students to help them meet today’s high academic standards. In its second year, ELT partnered with ten struggling middle schools, from five different states, to bring their students a better learning experience. By doing so, ELT was able to significantly raise both Math and English proficiency rates in each school.
The 2012 Expanded Learning Time Summit gathered educators from both ELT schools and non-ELT schools, to discuss the future of education with expanded learning time. This two day conference kicked off with words from Massachusetts State Governor Deval Patrick. Governor Patrick spoke of the widening class-based achievement gap and how programs, like ELT, can enable the poorest students from the poorest neighborhoods to achieve academic success through more learning time with high-quality educators and professionals.
Governor Patrick also highlighted the two ELT partner schools that reside in Massachusetts—Orchard Gardens and Edwards Middle School. “Thanks to the Extended Learning Time the Edwards School in Boston has transformed itself from being the lowest performing middle school in Boston to the highest performing.—which is pretty exciting stuff,” spoke Governor Patrick.
A variety of sessions followed the Governor’s welcome speech. These gave attendees the opportunity to learn more about how the ELT program has developed in its first year and how students and teachers alike have benefitted from it.
Citizen Schools also unveiled, Expanded Opportunities: How Ten Middle Schools Lengthened the Learning Day with Citizen Schools, a first year report on their national initiative to lengthen the learning day. This report outlines how Citizen Schools was able to replicate their successful partnership with Edwards Middle School, the first ELT partner program, with other schools to produce strong results.
“Expanded learning time offers a powerful way to address America’s growing class-based opportunity gap and to provide all children with the extra learning time and successful experiences that their wealthier peers may take for granted,” said Eric Schwarz, Co-Founder and CEO of Citizen Schools. “Citizen Schools now has a national track record of teaming up with district public schools to dramatically improve schools serving some of the highest need students in the nation.”
For more information on Citizen Schools and their ELT programs click here.
We are thrilled to have hosted Citizen Schools’ 2012 Extended Learning Summit and look forward to 2013!
