Quiet Time Program: Meditation Helps Close Achievement Gap in Schools

Meditation plays a vital role in some schools in improving students' performance and in closing the achievement gap between poor city children and affluent suburban kids.

According to The New York Times, research shows that chronic stress among underprivileged students gained from daily stress factors such as poverty, deprivation, lack of steady parental input, physical danger and constant fear, can impair their brain development and learning ability.

With this problem at hand, an education reformer thought of a way to improve both the quality of education and student behavior in schools.

Former principal of the Visitacion Valley Middle School, James Dierke partnered in 2007 with the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education and David Lynch Foundation to develop the Quiet Time Program.

The Quiet Time Program requires introducing two 15-minute periods of quiet to a school day. The quiet time can be used by students to perform Transcendental Meditation, a stress­-reducing technique that involves thinking of a mantra, or engage in other quiet activities like silent reading. The program aims to reduce students' stress levels while helping them learn.

Dierke's efforts paid off in three years-Visitacion Valley's suspensions dropped by 79 percent, attendance rose to 98 percent, students' grade point averages rose each year and the G.P.A. increase for the lowest performing demographic was double that for the overall student group.

Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education and San Francisco Unified School District research department's review of the program last year corroborated the findings that the Quiet Time Program helped reduce stress and suspensions and increase emotional intelligence, attendance and academic performance of students.

David Lynch Foundation hopes to expand the Quiet Time Program to serve 7,500 high-need youth and school faculty in San Francisco and Oakland. It also aims to create a "national dissemination model to bring Quiet Time into more high-need schools" and conduct research to document program outcomes and identify its best practices.

While students from all walks of life can benefit from the Quiet Time Program, it prioritizes schools in low-income areas, especially since it is a relatively inexpensive meditation program that students and teachers can use.