THERE IS GOOD REASON TO BELIEVE a longer school day for students in high-poverty school districts could make a big difference in closing the persistent achievement gap that leaves poor children lagging badly behind their peers from middle-class and wealthier communities.  Nearly every school that is able to break the mold and get impressive achievement results with students from low-income backgrounds makes use of a longer school day, a longer school year, or both. And leaders of these so-called “high-performing, high-poverty” schools almost universally say their results would not be possible without the added time they utilize.

The rub is that more time seems to be necessary, but that extra time is not sufficient on its own to drive the kinds of improvements hoped for with an expanded school day.  That’s the challenge state leaders face as they consider a call by Gov. Deval Patrick for a $5 million increase in the $14.1 million already being spent in the state’s six-year-old expanded learning time initiative.

The governor’s proposal, contained in his 2014 budget plan, would allow the state to add a handful of new schools to the existing ELT initiative, which currently funds a longer school day in 19 Massachusetts schools.  The long-range thinking is to boost funding for ELT to $70 million within four years to support longer school days at every middle school in the state serving a high-poverty population – about 175 schools in all.  The program has allowed schools to add nearly two hours to their day.

“We know what works. We know that moving away from a school day and school year based on a farming schedule and making it more like the modern work day makes sense,” Patrick said at State House briefing on Tuesday. “We know that more time on task makes sense and works.”

Massachusetts 2020, the Boston nonprofit that has spearheaded the ELT effort, has organized a new statewide coalition, Time To Succeed Massachusetts, to push for added funding for extended school day programs. The coalition is made up of civic, business, and education leaders, including the co-chairs of the Legislature’s education committee and leaders of the state’s two main teachers unions as well as the leader of the state charter school association and several high-performing charter schools.  Of significance is the fact that the coalition is calling for additional ELT funding to be available to charter as well as district schools that provide extended learning time.

“It’s pretty unprecedented in this state to have all the charter leaders and big union leaders calling for this,” says Chris Gabrieli, chairman of Massachusetts 2020.

There are now 90 Massachusetts schools with longer school days – a mix that includes 52 charter schools (nearly all of the charters in the state), the 19 state-funded ELT schools, and a group of newer “turnaround” schools, which are previously low-performing schools that got federal funding once they agreed to major restructuring. The schools all use the added time differently, apportioning it in varying combinations to added core academics; art, music, and other enrichment activities; and added planning time for teachers.

Based on state measures of students’ academic growth, Gabrieli says, four times as many Massachusetts schools with longer days show high growth in math and two-and-half times as many show high growth scores in English as similar traditional schools across the state serving low-income students. These are “big gains compared to the pack,” Gabrieli said in a briefing earlier this week for reporters. “There’s no reason to think it can’t work anywhere in Massachusetts.”

But the findings combine the results from all three types of schools, with charter schools making up the bulk of the sample. The results to date among the subset of schools funded through the state ELT initiative have been disappointing.  A year ago, Cambridge-based Abt Associates completed a detailed report on the state initiative that had been commissioned by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. “On average, there were no statistically significant effects of ELT after one, two, three, or four years of implementation on MCAS student achievement test outcomes for 3rd, 4th, or 7th grade English language arts, 4th, 6th, or 8th grade math, or 8th grade science,” reported the study. There was a statistically significant benefit of ELT on 5th grade science scores.

Gabrieli likens the findings to those of a well-known national study of charter schools that found they did not, on average, perform better than similar district public schools, even though some charters had exceptional results.  Among the state-funded ELT schools, “there are clear pockets of excellence,” he says. “Nobody questions that there are ELT schools that have had very significant gains compared to their prior performance.”

Indeed, several schools that have been part of the initiative have shown impressive results. The Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, which serves a student population that is 90 percent low-income, has narrowed considerably the gap between its students’ English MCAS scores and statewide averages and its students outperform the state average in math. The Kuss Middle School in Fall River, labeled “chronically underperforming” by the state in 2005, made math and English gains since joining the ELT initiative in 2007 that were dramatic enough to have the school featured on the CBS Evening News last month.

But the lack of an overall positive outcome among ELT-initiative schools points to a crucial issue facing the movement for a longer school day:  More time will only pay off if it’s used well by a school that has the latitude to make sure it has the right staff on board, is smart about using data to guide its instruction, and creates a culture of high expectations for both staff and students.

More time is “an antidote to poverty, to give schools the time and resources they need to overcome kids’ disadvantages,” says Gabrieli. But that added time only confers great benefits, he says, when schools get it right on the issues: “people, data, and school culture.”

Gabrieli says the state recognizes the need to hold schools accountable for results when they get added funding – $1,300 per student – for expanded learning time. In the wake of the Abt study, he says, two ELT schools were dropped from the program, and others that are performing poorly may not see their funding renewed.

Given that high-performing charter schools have often served as the proof-points for successful use of extended learning time, it seems reasonable to wonder whether district schools need some of the same type sort of autonomies over staffing and other school decisions that charters enjoy in order to put the right team of teachers in place and build a school culture committed to high expectations for students.

That seems to be the thinking in Lawrence, where a state-appointed receiver is now in charge of a district that had suffered for years under ineffective leadership and woeful student outcomes.  Jeff Riley, the Lawrence school receiver – who cut his teeth as principal of the Edwards Middle School in Charlestown, the showpiece of the state ELT initiative – is giving schools there an added hour per day. But he has also given principals a lot more latitude over staffing and told them they will, in turn, be accountable for delivering improved results.

While there is lots of reason to believe more time is crucial for students from low-income families, the results from the first years of the state ELT initiative suggest an expansion may need to include rethinking the criteria for approving schools for the program and examining ways to improve how their use of added time is monitored.

“The burden of proof remains on all of us to show that in the next cycle we can have a higher hit rate than in the last cycle,” says Gabrieli.  At the same time, he adds, “the only thing worse than taking a risk that you won’t get consistently good results is sitting back and thinking you will break the cycle of poverty without making big changes in the school day.”

Michael Jonas works with Laura in overseeing CommonWealth Beacon coverage and editing the work of reporters. His own reporting has a particular focus on politics, education, and criminal justice reform.