Time: The Missing Ingredient in Literacy Reform

Guest authors Jack Schneider and Ashley Carey are two of the co-authors of On the Clock: The Centrality of Time in Teacher Work, a new research brief published by the Albert Shanker Institute.

Across the country, states are rushing to adopt “science of reading” legislation. The motivations are sincere, and the research base is substantive. New curricula promise better outcomes; professional development workshops aim to equip teachers with evidence-based practices; data systems can help educators track student progress. From a distance, it seems comprehensive enough to close the nation’s yawning literacy gaps.

But policymakers have largely overlooked a critical ingredient that will almost certainly determine whether these reforms prove successful. And if you’re a teacher, you probably already know what it is.

Consider Ms. Smith, a second-grade teacher with a decade of classroom experience. She’s committed to her students and she understands why the new literacy approach matters. She wants to implement it well.

But she’s drowning.

The new curriculum requires her to learn new instructional methods. The assessment system requires one-on-one reading screeners for each of her 24 students—a process that eats up two full instructional days. New data management systems demand hours of tracking and reporting. And all of this has been added to everything Ms. Smith is already doing. 

As a result, her willing participation has curdled into stress and exhaustion. She’s joining colleagues in griping about the new program and, more troublingly, beginning to question whether teaching is still a sustainable career.

This is not a story about a struggling teacher. This is a story about what happens when policymakers ignore the centrality of time.

Our research centers on a simple observation: policy doesn’t directly change what happens in classrooms. Instead, policy shapes the professional contexts in which teachers work—the schedules, resources, expectations, and conditions they navigate daily. These contexts interact with individual teacher characteristics to determine how teachers allocate their time. And how teachers allocate their time determines both their effectiveness in the classroom and their overall well-being.

This framework reveals why so many reforms disappoint. When policymakers add substantial new responsibilities without restructuring how time is used, teachers face an untenable bind. To make it all work, they debate whether to work unpaid hours in the evening, or if they should cut corners. Some debate whether to leave the profession altogether. 

This dynamic—a labor-intensive educational reform with little concern for the existing time structures in which teachers carry out their work—is not new. We’ve watched this cycle play out for decades. Achievement gaps prompt ambitious policy. Stirring rhetoric and significant investments raise expectations. Early results suggest something is working. And then, slowly, the project of implementation crashes into the reality of teachers’ working conditions. The instructional core resists change. Results plateau. We move on to the next reform.

Our aim is not to weigh in on the “science of reading.” Instead, our argument is that policy implementation—whatever its evidentiary base—requires more than new curricula and professional development. It requires honoring the time constraints that define teaching. And it demands that we answer hard questions that typically go unasked. When teachers assess students individually, who covers their classes? When they learn new instructional methods, when do they have the opportunity to practice, reflect, and debrief with peers? When they face new lesson planning burdens, what existing responsibilities disappear? When they navigate new data systems, where does the time come from?

Until we answer these questions—and restructure accordingly—we’ll watch another generation of teachers struggle to implement reforms that were designed without them in mind. If policymakers are interested in a different outcome, they should ask teachers what their most valuable resource is.