In this era of common standards and common assessments, we often assume that all schools have
the same amount of time to accomplish their many goals. And at one level, our study confirmed
this assumption. The Keeping Time teacher survey found that weekly instructional time and
annual instructional days are similar across most California high schools.
However, the survey also revealed that students across different communities experience these
allocated days and minutes in dramatically different ways. California students attending highconcentration
poverty schools are not able to access as much instructional time as the majority of
their peers. The Keeping Time survey highlights the ways that community stressors and chronic
problems with school conditions lead to far higher levels of lost instructional time in these high
schools. In essence, high-poverty schools experience cracks in the very foundation of educational
opportunity.