General Claims - Chicago Tribune | Blog



General Claims

CTU claims: “Their figures include student lunch. Student lunch is not instructional time. This matters because Chicago students only have 20 minutes for lunch; students in other districts have longer, so in some cases what appears to be more instructional time is simply more time for student lunch.”

Incorrect. CPS specifically excluded lunch periods from all of its instructional time calculations. For instance, the State of Texas mandates at least 7 hours (420 minutes) of instructional time per day, which CPS used as its starting point for Houston ISD. (; Texas Educational Code § 25.081(a)). This total includes lunch. Therefore, after sampling Houston schools’ lunch hours, CPS subtracted 45 minutes for lunch periods to arrive at the total instructional time of 375 minutes it used in its calculations. Importantly, this number is even lower than the CTU’s number.

CTU claims: “Chicago schools have more instructional time per year than either New York or Los Angeles.”

Incorrect. As explained below, the CTU has miscalculated New York’s school day length. The CTU’s statement about Los Angeles is inaccurate, largely because the CTU has miscalculated school day lengths in both Los Angeles and Chicago.

New York City Schools

CTU claims: “CPS figures add 37.5 minutes to New York’s school day. The 37.5 minutes are part of a special program for certain targeted students and should not be included in general calculations.”

Incorrect. CPS only included the 37.5 minutes to New York’s teacher work day, not the student instructional time. Although the teacher contract actually specifies a workday of 8:30 a.m. through 3:50 p.m., or 440 minutes (, page 17), CPS used a shorter time calculation (410 minutes, or 6 hours and 20 minutes per day, plus four 37.5 special periods per week) for the teacher work day.

CTU claims: “Elementary (K-6) students go to school 5 hours a day and middle & high school (7-12) students go to school 5.5 hours a day, exclusive of lunch. (Source: )”

The CTU’s source only states that any days with less than either 5 (elementary) or 5.5 hours (secondary) of instructional time constitutes a “shortened session” (see #9 on page 3 of the CTU’s source) in New York City Schools. This does not mean that New York’s regular school day is only 5 or 5.5 hours. On the contrary, New York City Schools publishes a minimum instructional time document that specifies more that each school day includes a minimum of 5.5 instructional hours (). This source formed the basis of CPS’s study. After compiling the total instructional time from this source, we confirmed that the minimum instructional time (not including lunch) was at least 5.5 hours at NYC schools, and that many schools elect to have longer days. We spoke with Sandy Ferguson (male), the Executive Director for MS Enrollment, Office of Student Enrollment, sfergus@schools., 212.374.7636.

Los Angeles Unified School District

CTU claims: “CPS figures are wrong for Los Angeles. For the 2010-2011 school year, L.A. reduced the number of school days by 5. There will be a further reduction during the 2011-2012 year.”

Inaccurate. As the CTU’s statement suggests, LAUSD included 5 temporary furlough days in the schedule in 2010-11 due to California’s budget crisis. These furlough days are not permanent changes to the school calendar, however. The CTU’s statement is true, but gives an inaccurate picture.

Notably, even if you subtract another 5 furlough days from LAUSD’s calendar, this only eliminates another 1550 minutes from annual elementary school instruction and 1850 from annual secondary school instruction—not nearly enough to overcome Chicago’s nearly 3500 and 9500 minute deficiencies (respectively) when compared to LAUSD.

CTU claims: LAUSD has 5.17 hours of instruction for “single track” schools or 5.71 instructional hours per day for “multi-track” schools.

Incorrect. LAUSD Board Rule 1105, not the teacher contract cited by the CTU, specifies the minimum instructional time (). In addition, the categories “single track” and “multi-track” do not exist at LAUSD. Instead, LAUSD uses three different schedule categories: traditional, four-track year round, and three-track year round. Three-track year round schools have a 343 minute (5.72 hour) instructional day in elementary schools, and a 409 minute (6.82 hour) instructional day in secondary schools.

Traditional or four-track year round schools have a 310 minute (5.17 hour) instructional day at the elementary level, and a 370 minute (6.17 hour) instructional day at the secondary level. CPS used the lower, traditional schedule in its calculations. The CTU has cited the correct elementary school instructional time at traditional schools, but has used the wrong total for traditional track secondary schools.

CTU claims: “The contract indicates that ‘daily minutes will vary due to professional development and early student release on Tuesday’ implying that the numbers may overstate the actual total instructional hours per year.”

Incorrect. Board Rule 1105 specifies the minimum instructional day, as discussed above. That rule does permit (but not require) schools to “have a maximum of 20 shortened days or a maximum of 10 minimum days,” or some combination of the two, as specified in the Rule. A “shortened day” at a traditional track elementary school is 275 minutes, or 35 minutes shorter. A “minimum day” at a traditional track elementary school is 240 minutes, or 70 minutes shorter. Even if an elementary school elected to use all of its days, the maximum amount of annual instructional time lost to shortened/minimum days is 700 minutes— not nearly enough to eliminate Chicago’s nearly 3500 minute deficiency compared to LAUSD.

The analysis is the same with secondary schools. A “shortened day” at a traditional track high school is 305 minutes, or 65 minutes shorter. A “minimum day” at a traditional track high school is 240 minutes, or 130 minutes shorter. Even if a secondary school elected to use all of its days, the maximum amount of annual instructional time lost to shortened/minimum days is 1300 minutes—not nearly enough to eliminate Chicago’s nearly 9500 minute deficiency compared to LAUSD.

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