Teaching one group of students subtraction and another multiplication -- the same day, in the same class -- is quite a challenge.  A recent Washington Post story profiled a Montgomery County, MD teacher doing this, in part because of a new curriculum emphasizing differentiated instruction.

When you're coming up with multiple lessons a day, like the "subtraction game with dice at one table" and the "laminated frogs bearing subtraction problems" that the story described, you've got to have plenty of planning time. That includes time to collaborate with other teachers so curricula align horizontally across subjects and vertically across grade levels.

So how much collaborative planning time do teachers get?  Not very much, according to our TR3 database:


  
Only 18 percent of TR3's 113 districts set aside a specific amount of time each week for collaborative planning, according to the district documents we reviewed, and a paltry 6 percent reserve an hour or more for teachers to work together. The leaders are Kansas City (MO) School District, with 2.7 hours set aside for collaborative planning each week; District of Columbia Public Schools with 2.5 hours; and Denver Public Schools with 2 hours.

To find out more about how teachers' time is divided each day, check out TR3's custom report page.

-Ginger Moored