In the face of budget cuts, teacher shortages, and pressure to enhance student engagement—and inspired by Major League’s Baseball brand new, transformational pitch clocks—several school districts have recently cut down on inefficiencies and shortened the school day by implemented “teach clocks.” With this system of timers, teachers, students, and staff receive a set number of minutes to complete tasks and finish up those thoughts and lessons. A recent study examines the novel practice.
Schools, it finds, are implementing the clocks in intersecting ways for all three groups. Teachers often revise classroom activities such that pupils, for example, show without telling, dissect tadpoles instead of frogs, and perform songs in 2/2 time rather than 4/4. In most cases, students who violate the timer—perhaps by attempting to think before speaking—lose a point on their most recent assignment. And staff usually lose an hour of pension credit per violation.
The upshot: School days typically end two to three hours earlier.
The researchers also examined the teach clocks’ impact on achievement. The largest statistically significant gains in both math and reading occurred in schools that only implemented the clocks for administrators, followed by places that gave them to all three groups. The researchers hypothesize that shorter staff meetings and less bureaucratic micromanaging gave teachers more time to actually do their jobs.
Though these results are fascinating, several limitations to more expansive teach-clock use remain. Shop teachers, for example, have expressed concern about rising student injury rates, and music teachers complain that the songs sound terrible. Nonetheless, given waning student attention spans and the fact that the weather is getting so nice out, district and school leaders would do well to consider the intervention’s potential.
SOURCE: Sandy Alcántara, Justin Verlander, and Julio Urías, “Limiting Dead Time: Teach Clock Effects in a Generic Suburban District,” Efficiency in Schools Working Paper Series (April 1, 2023).
