Education Week - June 12, 2019 - 7

By Alyson Klein

chool and district leaders love using research to
decide which curriculum to adopt or what kind of
professional development to offer.
But educators-and professionals in just about
every other field-often ignore research when it comes to
thinking through how to use another precious resource: Time.
In fact, almost everyone, including K-12 leaders, think
timing and scheduling is an "art," said Daniel Pink, a
best-selling author who has written extensively on the
subject. But really, it's a "science."
That's the message Pink recently delivered to K-12 district leaders at Education Week's Leaders to Learn From
event. And it is a message he will likely continue repeating
until people start paying attention.
"When we make our timing decisions we tend to make
them based on intuition," Pink said. "We tend to make
them based on guess work. That's the wrong way to do it.
We should be making them based on evidence."
And there's a ton of research that shows how key timing
is outside of education, as Pink notes in his book, When:
The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing. For instance,
you're much more likely to get better medical care in the
morning, since doctors are more prone to make mistakes
in administering anesthesia or prescribing unnecessary antibiotics later in the day. And on a different note:
Divorce filings spike at certain times of the year-March
and August to be exact, Pink said.
So what does the research on timing suggest for K-12
educators? Here are four big takeaways.

Move tasks
requiring extensive
analysis to the
beginning of the day,
unless you're dealing
with high school
students.
Most people-teenagers are a big exception-are
more likely to be in a good mood in the morning.
Then mood begins to dip, hitting a low around 3 to 4
p.m. And it picks back up in the evening, according
to research by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize
winning psychologist who Pink cited.
That bears out in schools, too, Pink explained. In
Denmark, students were randomly assigned to take
a computerized test at different times of the day. It
turned out the students who tested earliest in the
day had a huge advantage. In fact, taking the test
just one hour later caused a decline in scores similar
to the effect of slightly less household income, lower
parent education, or missing two weeks of school,
according to National Academy of Sciences research.
And a separate study of the Los Angeles Unified
School District found that kids who took math
during the first two periods of the day had higher
grades and did better on state math tests.
"We think of scheduling as a logistical exercise
but it's not just a logistical issue, it's a pedagogical
issue," said Pink at the Leaders to Learn From
event May 3. "Elementary school students who take
math in the morning, learn more math."
There are exceptions, of course. Some people are
"larks"-meaning they are sharpest in the morning,
and don't really recover later on. Larks make up
about 15 percent of the population, Pink said. Another
15 percent or so are "owls," who peak way later in the
day. Everyone else is somewhere in the middle.
What that means for educators: If you're
scheduling classes for elementary school children,
try to front-load the analytical tasks, like math or
report writing, anything that requires kids to put
their heads down and concentrate. Later in the
afternoon is a great time for brainstorming and
creative work. The middle of the day is best for
"administrative tasks." (Think answering routine
emails.) Shifting the schedule this way delivers
bigger bang for the buck for vulnerable groups-like
children from poor families-than it does for other
kids, Pink said.

T.J. Kirkpatrick for Education Week

How Schools Can
Spend Time More
Wisely: 4 Big Tips

Best-selling author Daniel Pink breaks down how
schools can improve the use of time.

Want better academic
performance from
your students?
"Give 'em frickin' recess."

Starting the high
school day later is
"a giant pain" but
"the right thing to do."

Americans in general-
not just educators-
underestimate the value
of a break, Pink said. But
research shows that if you give children 20 or 30
minutes to run around before a test, their scores go up.
And low-performing students are most likely to benefit
from the pause.
Even a short break-say, a one-minute stretch-
beats no break at all, Pink said. To get the most benefit,
a break should be taken outdoors, with other people,
and away from your typical working environment.
In other words, the best possible break sounds an
awful lot like recess.
"Certain policy remedies are, 'in order to improve
test scores, we need to get rid of recess. Recess is soft.
Recess doesn't lead to high performance,' " Pink said.
"That is just empirically wrong. It's flatly wrong.
Everything we know about breaks suggests the
opposite."
Recess needs to be a priority in the schedule, just
like any other subject. And the argument needs to shift
from recess as a way to build social-emotional skills to
recess as a means to boost academic outcomes.
"We should fight for recess not as a nicety, but as
necessity," Pink said. "If you want kids to perform better,
give 'em frickin' recess. This is not about being niceynice. Recess makes them better at classroom learning."

Remember that statistic
that most people do their
best work earlier in the
day? Throw that out the
window for teenagers, who for the most part are more
likely to peak later in the day and be sluggish in the
morning.
That has big implications for high school start
times. In fact, research shows that starting school too
early for high school students can lead to weight gain,
depression, lower academic performance, and just
generally undesirable behaviors, like smoking tobacco
or using illicit drugs.
The solution: Push back that opening high school
bell. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics
recommends that high schools start no earlier than
8:30 a.m.
This is all easier said than done, Pink acknowledged.
Rearranging high school schedules means monkeying
with sports practices, buses, and parents' schedules.
But it's worth it, Pink said. And it's ultimately not even
that pricey. In fact, a study of North Carolina's Wake
County school district found that it was one of the most
cost-effective ways to improve student performance. The
most disadvantaged kids get the biggest boost.
Pushing back high school start time is "a giant pain
... except it's the right thing to do," Pink told the school
district leaders.

Want nicer,
more
inclusive
kids? Consider
mandating
choir practice.
Or at least try
out some clapping games. Or line
dancing. Or maybe rowing practice,
if you've got a lake and some boats
handy. Anything that gets kids
moving together in a synchronized
way.

That's because children ages 4 to
6 are more likely to smile, engage in
eye contact, help out their teacher, or
befriend children who aren't exactly
like them after they've participated
in some sort of synchronized activity,
said Pink, citing research from the
Journal of Developmental Science.
"There's this incredible thing that
goes on that after synchronized
activity, kids engage in more pro-social
behavior. Kinder. More open," he said.
Choral singing may be the standout
here: It calms heart rates and boosts

endorphin levels, increases sensitivity
to others, and even reduces the need for
pain medication and makes it easier for
people to fight infections, Pink said.
"The benefits of choral singing are
outrageous. It is shocking," he said. In
fact, in terms of benefits, it's up there
with exercise and meditation. "It is more
powerful than you could ever imagine."
The takeaway? Schools might want
to consider making choral singing
mandatory for all students, or at least
letting the tone-deaf ones join choir if
they want to, Pink said.

Coverage of whole-child approaches to learning is supported in part by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, at www.chanzuckerberg.com. Education Week retains sole editorial control over the content of this coverage.

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Education Week - June 12, 2019

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