Dive Brief:

• "Supporting Student Success Through Time and Technology," a new paper recently released by the National Center on Time & Learning, details how schools can hit the educational sweet spot by combining blended learning and longer school days.
• The paper points to Grant Beacon Middle School in Denver, where the two practices are successfully being implemented, as evidence of the approach's effectiveness. 
• The article does note that this approach may not be the easiest or most cost-effective for districts, and that blended learning on its own has been the subject of studies that note its lack of significance on student achievement. Extending school days alone has also yielded mixed outcomes.

Dive Insight:

Most noteworthy in the report is the fact that referrals went down when this system was employed. Blended learning, which has students learn at least a portion of their lesson through digital instruction, is not just restrained to the K-12 arena and gained traction in recent years particularly due to the fact that successful schools in Finland utilized the approach to some degree. For example, students there receive their lessons through video on their own time, when U.S. students would be doing homework, and then use class time to essentially do that work in the absence of a lecture and with the aid of teachers, who answer questions or alleviate confusion.