Discussions about the “resources” needed to educate students usually revolve around money. Yet cold hard cash isn’t the sole “input” bearing on educational success. Time—both the length of school year and day as well as how those hours are spent—also makes a big difference. As a literature review by Matthew Kraft and Sarah Novicoff found, adding instructional time improves student achievement. Conversely, decreasing time (e.g., through four-day weeks) reduces achievement. Though not in their analysis, the disastrous pandemic-era experience made abundantly clear the massive negative impacts of diminished and disrupted learning time.
Long before this research or Covid existed, the commonsense notion that time matters was stressed in the landmark Nation at Risk report (1983). There, the authors wrote:
We recommend that significantly more time be devoted to learning the New Basics. ... School districts and state legislatures should strongly consider 7-hour school days, as well as a 200 to 220-day school year.
The U.S. has never moved toward 200-day school year, at least not at scale. The historical standard at the time of a Nation at Risk, and still largely in place, is a 180-day school year. As the Pew Research Center reports, thirty-four states had a 180-day minimum in 1989, and thirty-one states required at least 180 days as of 2023.
Until 2014, Ohio had been one of the states requiring at least 180 days of pupil instruction. This standard, however, was abandoned amid a shift toward a minimum hour requirement. Today, district schools must be “open for instruction” each year for at least 910 hours in grades K-6 and 1,001 hours in grades 7-12.[1]
The move to hours was probably an effort to provide schools more flexibility around scheduling. But it’s also led to noticeably fewer days of pupil instruction and significant reductions in the amount of instructional time students receive each year—a problem that Ohio Representative Adam Bird pointed out in committee testimony last year.
To illustrate the reductions, consider the district where I live, Dalton Local. The board-approved calendar for 2025–26 included 176 days of pupil instruction, excluding a few staff PD days. The district cancelled seven days for weather and made up none of them. As a result, students will receive 169 days of instruction this year, provided the year concludes as planned. Given that the district hasn’t implemented a longer school day,[2] students will receive approximately a week to two weeks less instructional time this year than under Ohio’s 180-day requirement.[3]
A more startling example comes from Columbus. Its 2025-26 calendar starts with just 167 days of planned pupil instruction. The district likewise cancelled seven days for weather, resulting in just 160 days this year. The district operates the same daily bell schedule as it did in 2010 under the 180-day requirement. Without an extended school day, the significantly fewer days in session—as many as twenty (!) days less—indicates that Columbus students receive far less instructional time than their peers attending the district before the change to minimum hours.
America—Ohio included—is still very much a “nation at risk.” Student proficiency in math and reading sunk during the pandemic and recovery has been exceedingly slow. Longstanding achievement gaps remain unacceptably wide. As indicated by sky-high chronic absenteeism, too many students are MIA and ruining their chances of long-term success.
An abbreviated school year of 160 to 170 days simply won’t cut it. Lopping days off the calendar robs students of valuable learning time. Generous holiday breaks, disruptive cancellations, and the rise of professional learning days result in stop-and-go instruction that is surely less effective than consistent five-day-per-week instruction. Longer summer vacations only worsen “summer slide.” And a lower minimum opens the door to widespread use of four-day weeks—something a few Ohio schools have moved toward—which are terrible for students and burdensome to working families.
Ohio must restore a baseline expectation that its schools are open for in-person instruction at least 180 days per year, 7 hours per day. Time matters for students—and it’s past time for Ohio lawmakers to get schools back to a standard annual calendar. Clock’s ticking.
[1] Public charter schools must be open for 920 hours per year, though they are not allowed to count certain hours (e.g., recess) toward that minimum as districts may do. Neither district nor charter schools may count breakfast and lunch or extracurriculars toward the minimum.
[2] The bell schedules today are comparable to those described in the district’s 2008–11 teacher contract.
[3] Under prior law, districts were allowed three to five “calamity days” that were not required to be made up. In practice, then, districts would operate 175 to 180 days each year.
