Nooooooooooo!! No Longer School Days, Less Vacation, Obama!

This one, I don’t know about…it’s mnore than just test achievement. There are lots of studies that show more time in school decreases crime by younger people because they aren’t being delinquent. Many Boston schools have adopted a full day school and there have been lots of great outcomes – not just test outcomes, either. This is for older kids (middle school, high school I believe – correct if I’m wrong). Perhaps elementary school is too young, a time when free play time is worth more than additional hours at school.

So much of this divides along socioeconomic lines, too. Kids with rich parents get to do enriching activities and live in an education rich environment, with lots of books, museum passes, big back yards, sidewalks, etc. To some people, being home from school means plopping in front of the TV and eating high calorie, low nutrition food. I wish that all kids, all ages, would engage in creative, self directed activities that build their knowledge when they are not in school. Unfortuantely, that’s not always the case. And thtat’s really sad but maybe that’s where some extra time at school could help.

Also, the schools I know of that do extended days don’t necessarily spend all that extra tim in an academic class. Think of extracurricular activities like drama, dance, sports, band. Again, this is at the middle school level and above. Age/grade level is probably an issue on this subject but I wouldn’t write off the idea completely.

I’d love to hear failure/sucess stories of other school doing full day, especially at the elementary school level.

More time in school doesn’t necessarily mean more time in the class room. There are plenty of communities where school is the refuge from some pretty poorly unstructured rest of the time. I think more time in school would be great if that meant more time at recess, more time at lunch (my 4th grader gets 20 minutes), more time for extracurriculars (music, band, clubs and other self directed activities).

Knowing how much time is wasted on trivia in even a well-regarded, college-oriented public high school with great outcomes, I seriously doubt that more TIME in school is the first thing we ought to look at.

My kids pointed out that proposals for lengthening the school day would pretty much eliminate stuff like sports and extracurriculars (unless food and sleep are considered optional parts of the learning experience.) Now, those things aren’t vital for everyone, but they ARE part of the learning experience, in more of a “Free-Range” way than more time stuck in a classroom (watching movies and giving kids time to finish their homework) would be.

I agree that a longer school day would be a bad idea, but I kinda think shorter summer vacation would be good. Ideally combined with slightly longer winter, fall and spring breaks to chop up the year a bit more, with more overall days in school. And NO MORE homework for kids under ten. It’s driving me crazy to see my school loving 7yr old niece sigh over daily assignments. After school would provide plenty of freerange time if little kids didn’t have to sit and struggle through essays.

More school can’t do any good at all though unless we improve our system. Test scores might not be the best way to measure academic success, but neither scores or real achievemet will be improved by MORE TIME in ineffective classrooms.

I’m with some of the others here – longer school days could be a very positive thing if it meant more time for lunch and more opportunities for non-core classes, recess breaks, extracurriculars, or even just a structured, quiet time & place for study/homework.

There are a lot of variables in play here, but lack of structure and/or discipline at home has got to be a significant contributor to dwindled student achievement. When I was a kid, homework was the priority over everything else once I got home after school – no TV, no bike-riding, no friends over. Kids nowadays have so many distractions with TV, Facebook, texting, etc. that it’s a wonder they’re able to squeeze in ANY homework.

We have a problem in our school district. Fourth graders don’t know how to cut paper.

Why? Because we spend so much time cramming curriculum down their throats that no one has time to learn how to cut paper anymore. Or how to draw a face with eyes, nose, mouth, ears.

So I don’t know. We’ve taken away a lot of basic skills to get more academic instruction in, but to a huge detriment. If a longer school day means even MORE curriculum, NO WAY. But if it means a little more time to relax so our teachers aren’t in constant worry about being 5, 6, or 7 days behind where the curriculum says they should be….then maybe it would be better all around.

By the time American students graduate, they’re already one year behind their peers in other countries because they’re in school less hours a year. Moreover, studies have shown that so much is forgotten over summer break that much of the following year must be spent reviewing forgotten material. Indeed American students have many issues preventing them from succeeding, especially laziness and a sense of entitlement instilled by their parents. Regardless, American students spend too little time at school. I’m happy to see Obama working to correct this handicap.

I was hoping this would show up here! There are so many things that kids can’t learn by sitting in a desk doing worksheets. Things like:
-creativity
-social skills
-self-motivation

These things are best learned through play! Unstructured-by-adults play!

Furthermore, these things that are learned by play are the very things employers ask for. Nobody cares if you can recite all states/provinces and their capitals. Employers want people who have these skills not learned through a workbook.

I completely disagree with this idea. My (full day) kindergartener is already down to about an hour of at-home playtime a day, thanks to the length of the school day. If it didn’t involve oceans of red tape and paperwork, I’d be homeschooling right now. If they take away more of my daughter’s free time, I will do whatever it takes to homeschool. And for those who are arguing that more school time equals lower crime rates, that may be true in certain areas or socioeconomic classes, but just because it’s true there doesn’t mean the government should compel my semi-rural, bright, busy little girl to spend all her waking hours at school.

This is why the founding fathers argued that government should function as locally as possible as much as possible. In some areas, a longer school day might be beneficial. In other areas, it is already too long. When you try to normalize something as variable as the socioeconomics across a population of 300 million, it just doesn’t work. I say no to a longer school day, and NCLB for that matter.

I’m on the fence on this one. I think kids need more free time and less homework but I also think shorter vacations so there’s less to forget over the summer. The amount of work students are supposed to do at home after being in school during the day doesn’t make sense to me particularly in lower grades. If a parent spends two hours on homework with their kid, homeschooling sounds like a better use of the time. I guess I’m for a modest increase in hours for the school year coupled with a reduction in hours per day.

I would not be opposed to anything that restores real recess (TWO recesses AND a break at lunch) to the school day, nor a daily (daily! yes, daily!) gym. And if it means teachers stop assigning homework to children in the lower grades (where there’s never been shown any benefit to homework at all) I’m all for it.

‘Children in the United States spend more hours in school…’
Where is this statement coming from? I am seeing it everywhere and can no longer find the original source.

My knowledge of at least Japanese schools is that kids have less vacation days, attend school on Saturdays, school days can extend until night fall, and summer courses/night courses in Juku are encouraged to be taken before important exams in regards to high school selection.
Because of this, a 12-hour day is not unusual for a high school student (before homework). This time includes extra curricular activities and clubs of course, but our school time includes band, debate classes, and theater production classes.
If anyone can point me in the right direction as to how this study came to these numbers I would appreciate it.

In regards to the idea of extending school hours, I am for it. I believe longer days at school would give more time for extra curricular activities and for studies during school hours. I believe there are many subjects that schools do not cover (One being civil liberties and law) and with increased time they can accomplish this.
Relying upon parents to teach and supervise children to facilitate this learning in many cases is not feasible or just isn’t done because of poor parenting. In the cases it is done, I don’t see how making it more formal is a poor decision (unless the program is poorly created and turns into High School health class)

Sorry, I disagree with you on this one…I’m all for a longer school day and year-round school (they still get 4-6 weeks off in the summer with the remainder spread through out the year more). Schools are dropping PE, art, and music, giving kids about 15 minutes to eat lunch at 11 AM and sit the kids in a classroom all day with little respite. Kids need to expend physical energy throughout the day. Kids benefit greatly from PE, art and music. With more hours in the school day, kids can learn at a kids pace and with kid required breaks…they will ultimately learn more and learn better.

You can’t:
– pacify teacher’s unions’ demand for more money
– increase Education Dept bureaucracy
– make people more dependent on gov’t services (state-run day care essentially instead of private day care)
– exercise more control over local curriculum

…by letting people have *more* *freedom* over their lives, and less interaction with public schools.

You’ve got to breed dependency early, and replace the existing lives of citizens with lives centered around state institutions.

Please note the efficiency of spending more time/money on schools, and how spectacularly unsuccessful it is:
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/09/30/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-spending/

We need to stop teaching for content and teach for life long learning skills. It’s not as important that I memorize all the presidents as it is that I know how to find and evaluate the information and how to run/be part of a learning team/community.
I wish we had a year round school because summers off give kids too much time to get out of the swing of school, but longer and more days wont solve the achievement problem. We need to completely change how we teach kids. Self directed learning and IB are the way to go.

to the first commenter – yes kids with more ‘wealth’ (read access) have more options in time off, but what would you propose? Longer school days for the poor only? Imagine what an outcry that would bring!

And access doesn’t necessarily mean anything. With the internet, we all have access to just about anything, but how many of us have decided to become Latin speakers, or to play the cello?

There are plenty of rich kids who behave badly in their time off, and are neglected by their parents to boot – the Menendez brothers come to mind, as do the Columbine kids. Involved parents go a lot farther than wealth when it comes to bringing up children – ask any great depression survivor!

As to crime prevention. That is not what school should be. Public education was started in the interest of educating children to become productive adults – not just to keep them off the streets. And an education does not even necessarily equate to good behavior. Look at Bernie Madoff.

I don’t know if the study is out there, but I’ll wager Chicago had less teens beaten to death in the streets before the ‘advent’ of longer school days, shorter vacations, and detention camp thinking in public schools.

Nationally, there seems to be this thinking of children as crimes waiting to happen, and needing to be treated as prisoners in fenced compounds with magnetically sealed doors and police standing by. This is a generational tragedy.

I’ll be another voice saying that the Tampa newspaper data looks very suspect. I thought it was well understood that American school-years (generally 180 days) are shorter than most European countries, and far shorter than many Asian countries.

Malcom Gladwell’s book “Outliers” discusses IQ and test scores with relation to days in school, and apparently more importantly, length of summer vacation and what children do during the summer. His conclusions were pretty conclusive that 1) long summer vacations, common only in the US, are detrimental to learning, and 2) what kids do during those long summer vacations is very important to learning and information retention. If I recall correctly, Gladwell stated that the Japanese school year is 240 days, many Asian and Europeans are in the low 200’s, and US is 180.

to follow up on my last comment – it looks like the article does briefly mentions the longer school year in Asia, but the US has more “instructional hours”.

I’m sorry, but that just sounds like BS. Sounds to me like that would be US school systems “cooking the books” to inflate the hours they supposedly spend teaching science and math.

Delphine,

Couldn’t agree with you more! Our education system has failed in so many ways. Keeping kids locked up for 13 years and spitting them out with not much more than they came in with. I have always been amazed at how disciplined and educated young adults from other countries are – in fact I try exclusively to hire them, or kids who have been home-schooled, or private-schooled! Truth be told, when I see resumes from American public high school graduates, even the honor students, and I just throw them out.

Spending more time doing nothing might ‘reduce crime’ or make life easier for single moms, or whatever, but it won’t make our labor pool anymore talented, productive or valuable. I hope Obama doesn’t force this issue.

Of course they could considerably lengthen the number of days by taking all the school holidays off the calendar. Wonder if the teachers would go for it? After all…its for the children.

You said it, Lenore! Big Obama supporter, hate this idea…We need to look at Scandinavia and other countries where kids have more freedom, less time in school, and are doing better on tests, etc. In this country there are a lot of socioeconomic issues but more time being babysat by teachers and/or the government is not the solution here. The government should be working to level the socioeconomic playing field for working families, not babysitting all our kids.

Both my parents worked when I was kid. We were living on a shoestring, and I ultimately dropped out in the first trimester of 10th grade. Mainly because the teachers irritated me.

Today I am a civil engineer with a fine job in process-control and quality assurance of infrastructure products. I manage about three dozen facilities’ processes across the country. I sit on several committees responsible for writing standards in many municipalities.

I do not mean to boast, although I am very proud of my accomplishments, only to point out that there are many paths in life, and ‘socioeconomic playing field’ was never in our vocabulary. While making my brother and I clothes out of the scraps from her fabric store job that paid $1.25 per hour, my mother taught me everything I needed to know to be equipped for college and the professional world. My father – who would become a successful biochemist later in life worked only occassionally while spending the first 12 years of my life getting his PhD. We lived in community housing and subsisted almost entirely on the thousands of things you can make with corn meal, flour, and anything else you can imagine that’s cheaper in bulk.

Despite being poor, they taught me to calculate, think critically, understand music, write creatively and technically, read, and understand language structure.

I only went to school because that’s where my friends were. When I went to a big 10 college on a full scholarship from a private investment firm after writing a compelling essay, I outpaced every high school graduate and pulled an engineering degree out in 3 years, while raising two children of my own.

The fact that America, a relatively opulent country, is outpaced by some of the poorest countries on the planet says to me that ‘socioeconomic’ factors are more of outcome of poor education rather than a cause of it. And sadly, I think a lot of people use it as an excuse. This is only bolstered by my own experience.

Dead on, Jennifer. I was writing the same thing (except not as clearly) and refreshed just to see what new comments had appeared before I hit send. It doesn’t matter how long the official school day is, for a lot of young kids. They aren’t going *home* when the final bell rings anyway. No cozy mug of cocoa, no frolicking in the autumn leaves, no learning valuable moral lessons from their family culture. That’s just not a realistic alternative for a lot of folks. A longer school day option would save many working families the stress and uncertainty of patchwork afterschool care arrangements, and let kids spend less time being carted from place to place.

I’ll restate what I said above: even those who argue that other countries teach more effectively with longer days need to explain how merely lengthening the days without addressing the wasted time and (frequently) poor structure of American schools will help. In fact, the system needs to be changed, not extended as is.

“A longer school day option would save many working families the stress and uncertainty of patchwork afterschool care arrangements, and let kids spend less time being carted from place to place.”

Unfortunate as some of these things are, school is not supposed be the cure of all social ills. It is for education. Until it starts doing education well, I’m not terribly interested in hearing how the school structure can be used to solve the problems of people who can’t or won’t spend more time with their kids. Even then, it’s like using a hammer to change a light bulb because it’s the tool you have handy.

Public schools have never been strictly about academics. It’s not a recent expansion. There were school lunches and school clinics and onsite afterschool care and teams and bands and evening classes in many American city systems over a hundred years ago.

The summer break itself isn’t an academic measure–it was originally an accommodation for the schedules of working families, when that meant farming families.

@Chuck: I was that first commenter and I’m sorry that my comment was taken the wrong way by you – my only point was that, after seeing its effects in Boston, many people saw lots of positive outcomes aside from test scores, and decreased juvenile deliquency was one of them. The students were happy about this, too. Less boredom. I don’t think that’s a bad thing – replacing bordeom with meaningful activity. I’m sure plenty of “rich” kids find themselves bored after school and that, too, is a shame. That’s why I think this idea has some merit, is all. It would be better if kids could find their own ways to make good use of their time but that’s not always happening.

Of course I don’t think we should base the school calendar on whether the students are rich or poor but as others and I mentioned, perhaps this is an issue that is best left to individual distrcits and not the federal governemnt. If a school district thinks that the students will benefit from longer days and more days in school, then by all means they should do it.

@Q: I know and I’m glad for that. It should stay that way. Maybe the President’s message should be to encourage schools to look into it, as one way to benefit student learning and outcomes, instead of a broad this-is-how-it-should-be-everywhere stance. Because, like most people here, i don’t think this idea would work everywhere. But I do think it can work and has worked for many schools.

Too bad we don’t have more commenters with experience from schools that have already implemented longer days and/or shorter summers. I think everyone would benefit from knowing more about what that honestly looks like in practice, for better or worse.

I was in another discussion regarding the school day, especially in high schools. Longer academics no, but more vocational training yes was a good consensus. Throwing this out as an idea, but making all high school essential more like vocational high schools. 2/3 thirds academics 1/3 vocation skills someone proportioned through out the school year. It would have to cut out extra-curricular activities and sports though.

They already added one extra hour to the school day somewhere between when I was in 9th grade and when I was in 12th in the late 80’s/early 90’s. They shortened our break, too. I don’t recall learning anymore. Instead, I took TWO periods of journalism AND one of literary magazine, while still studying my academics…I think the addition was mainly for more extracurriculars to occur within school hours, so people wouldn’t have to choose between say, band and Advanced Spanish, but could take both. I don’t think they should have added the extra hour then, and I certainly don’t think they should add still more now. Kids need run around time, creative time, not constant, constant structured time. Not to mention the money involved…

This is partly why homeschooling has taken off. I don’t intend to homeschool, but I know a lot of people who do simply because they can get their kids to learn in 3 hours what it takes 7 hours for them to learn in the school, and the rest of the time they can free read and play.

P.S.

The reason we are behind in math and science is because we are about the only nation where EVERYONE, no matter how stupid, no matter how obstinate, is REQUIRED BY LAW to be in school until the age of 16. In a lot of countries, education is more of a privilege than a right, so when you compare math and science scores, you are often comparing the AVERAGE American to the ELITE of another country. I wonder what the outcome would be if you compared just the scores of top 10% of our school-age population with just the scores of the top 10% of their school-age population.

I’d rather have school time more efficient rather than just dishing out more of it in a rash (and unfounded) attempt to make things “better.” Before the whole country rushes off in a huff to do something like that, we really need to define what it is that we want to change for the better.

Someone earlier mentioned reducing juvenile crime as being a benefit, and that’s all well and good but then we’re as much as admitting that schools are simply prisons to keep kids away from the public. Our president is harping on test scores, but I see no reason why 1,100 hours a year is insufficient time to give children a thorough education in math and science.

If he wants to compare our outcome measures to Asian or European schools he’d better be ready to compare every facet of our differences. How about starting with a deeply ingrained cultural respect for teachers, reflected in everything from teacher pay to student (and parent) behavior. Isn’t it funny that a teacher in Wuhan, China can teach a classroom of 50-100 students more effectively than ours can teach 25-40? Does anyone really think that is directly related to the amount of hours they spend in class?

Let’s elect ME as czar of education. The first item on my docket would be a revamping and reimplementation of vocational ed programs for many of those students Nicole mentioned in the first response. They are not going to college, so we do not need to treat them like college preparatory students. I’m not talking about teaching these kids to retread tires, but in the cities where this is a big problem there are MANY semi-skilled labor demands that we could be preparing them for. They need concrete, realistic educational goals along the lines of keeping a budget, operating equipment, interacting with the public professionally and the like. Vocational training is far too maligned as it is, but learning how to run a gas station is much better than learning how to sell drugs and hurt people (the educational path many of these kids are on now).

They’ll call you racist for suggesting it. They’ll call you cold-hearted and they’ll hate the person that starts to solve some of these problems. They’ll do that because they’re the same idiots that got us into this mess in the first place.

“So I don’t know. We’ve taken away a lot of basic skills to get more academic instruction in, but to a huge detriment. If a longer school day means even MORE curriculum, NO WAY. But if it means a little more time to relax so our teachers aren’t in constant worry about being 5, 6, or 7 days behind where the curriculum says they should be….then maybe it would be better all around.”

I don’t understand this. Why did we have to take basic skills away to get kids to learn in 7 hours the basic academics that they were learning just fine in 6 hours 20 years ago? Or have we ALWAYS had this perpetual “crisis” in academics in the U.S.? Were we having a crisis when I was in school in the 80’s? I think we were. Always we are having an academic crisis. And yet somehow we still manage to churn out most of the world’s inventions and capital.

I think we need a “Some Children Left Behind” Act. Accept that not all children can achieve at the same level academically, and that some children are not college prep bound. Fail some children. Make them repeat the grade so they have a second chance to learn, but stop holding the other children back, and stop making them sit for seven hours a day in a desk when they could learn the same material in three hours and be reading a novel or playing sports instead…Stop pressuring teachers not to fail kids who need to be allowed to fail.

Accept that people can be productive members of society and hold a job even if they don’t know Physics and Algebra II. Have separate academic (college prep) and vocational (with internships in a wide variety of trades, sales jobs, service jobs, and classes in budgeting, etc.), beginning in the 10th grade.

I think a redistribution of school days would be good for the kids – 12 week vacations are really too long, and so are long semesters without any break. I went to school in Uk, where at that time we had 3 roughly 12 week terms, often with a half-term break in the middle, so only 6 weeks of school without a break. 3 vacations of several weeks long per year. School was also 9-4:30pm, but with long lunchbreaks for sports/music, and including an afternoon of community service. But on the other hand, for working parents it’s much easier to only have a couple of very short vacations during the year and then the long summer can be filled by summer camp.

I also suspected the Asians have shorter school days statistics, because I work with a lot of Asian high school students (via internet) in my freelance job, and they seem to have close to 12 hour school days. That said, I don’t think the longer school days are what are pulling Asians ahead in math and science, but that the pool of high school students tested has already been weeded out, whereas in the U.S. we have very few vocational tracts and everyone is entitled (nay, forced into by law) an education until 16, 17, or 18 (depending on the state). Many of the papers I read from Asian students complain of the length of study in their countries, the rote and limited nature of study, the lack of creativity and critical thinking, and they are trying to study abroad in the U.S. for these reasons.
I wouldn’t mind year-round school provided the TOTAL number of days was not increased, and there were simply longer breaks spread throughout the year. This would allow families to vacation during different seasons as well. As for those who rely on school for child care and then send the kids to summer camp – I’m sure if the school year changed, private camps would sprout up during all of the breaks. Summer camps only exist because of summer vacation. Fall, Spring, and Winter camps would exist if there were such vacations.

I’m among those that are on the fence about the issue, but possibly for a number of different reasons. And I certainly don’t think it’s a solution that would work in all schools around the country.

When I was a Freshman and Sophomore in high school, the school I went to had a system known as block scheduling (and, it should be noted, was the only school in the district with it, we were the guinea pigs). That is, some of the classes were double-length, but only for half the year. So, instead of having 8 periods that were 45 minutes in length, we had 2 that were 45 minutes and 2 that were 90 minutes.

When it came to the work itself, it actually worked out great. We had fewer subjects to deal with and the teacher had more time to teach each day (most teachers would have a break to stretch, or would allow some time at the end to relax or work on things like projects). Where it failed, though, was that it was a REALLY small school. Like 200 students, K-12 small. We had about half a dozen teachers, and because of block scheduling, we had nothing in the way of electives. However, from what I heard from someone who went to a big school that had block scheduling, it worked very well. This is an example of how schools can’t be homogenized across the country.

My high schools (the district closed the above school and sent us to a different one 15 miles away) were the standard 180-day, 8-3:30, two and a half months of summer vacation schools.

When I went to college, I went to a college that had a trimester system. That is, there are three semesters in the year: July through October, November through February, March through June. Within the trimesters, some classes had the option to be “session” classes, which were basically like the block system in high school — the classes were either longer or more often (or both) but were done in half a trimester. We had two weeks off between the Spring and Summer trimesters and a week between the others. We had two weeks off for Christmas/New Years, a four-day weekend for Thanksgiving, and a three day weekend for Easter and the major federal holidays.

You know what? While I remember bits and pieces from nearly every class I took in college, I probably couldn’t spit back to you most of what I learned there, particularly things that never got applied later on (basically, anything that wasn’t programming, project management, or, to a lesser extent, business).

I was in college, an adult, I didn’t have summers, and I still forgot pretty much the same amount of information that I forgot between years while in high school.

What does that tell me?

That tells me that standard classes don’t work. Not in college, not in high school. Why? Because most people learn through more methods than just reading and listening to lectures. Some people can’t even learn hardly AT ALL through just reading and listening to lectures. The funny thing is, the teachers know this, or many of them do. Ask any teacher that teaches critical thinking or English and they’ll tell you pretty much the same thing.

What works best? Including DOING in the curriculum. Like most parents know, a really good way to learn math is through cooking. Why is it such a good way? Because it’s a practical application of the theory. It provides a context and a reason for it, making it easier to remember.

I’ve been keeping an eye on the local politics, especially in regards to the schools in the area. The kids in one district around here have no extracurricular activities this year. They don’t even have gym, and I don’t think they have art or music, either. They didn’t get enough funding from the district, and the constituents voted down funding bills. Even some of the schools that are better off have been cutting out extracurricular activities, and these are districts where you’d be hard pressed to find a street that didn’t have at least one house sporting a banner showing that their kid was an athlete. They’re cutting out the very things that have been proven over and over again to aid in learning (not to mention provide a change of pace from the “hardcore” academics).

The American education system doesn’t need just more hours, it needs a total overhaul of how it works. If that overhaul includes more hours so that there can be adequate time to have hands-on learning sessions for as many classes as possible, then I wouldn’t be opposed to it.

However, if it means the further deterioration of things like extracurricular activities, or the elimination of the arts, then I vehemently oppose it. Like others said, more of an ineffective thing does not make it effective.

Oh, I so agree with Annika! I was home-schooled and public-schooled. And I have taught in both the public and private school settings. Now, with my oldest turning 3 and already beginning to read (because that’s what interested him, not because I’ve forced it down his throat), all I can think is, “I must homeschool.”

The biggest problem is: there are parents who can’t or just won’t parent. However, I am not one of those parents. The vast majority aren’t that kind of parent! But because that kind of parent exists, my kid must suffer through more hours inside a classroom so that the absentee-parent’s child can complete what my kid has completed in half the time? I don’t think so!

There used to be a thing called summer school, but funding for summer school in most places has been cut. Let’s fund summer school for the ones who are behind and need the extra help, and leave the kids who are already successful alone!

Clover writes: “If it didn’t involve oceans of red tape and paperwork, I’d be homeschooling right now.”

Clover, it usually doesn’t. Don’t know where you live, but it’s relatively easy homeschooling in my state. I provided a Notice of Intent at the beginning (can be as short as three paragraphs, mine was two pages but that’s just me) and Proof of Progress at the end (I used a high school admissions test) and they left me completely alone in the middle.

Do check out your state regs. It may not be nearly as difficult as you think. All newbies think it’s like climbing Mount Everest. I thought so too. Not to push you but that thinking delayed it for years so that I was only left with one. It is harder to homeschool than to send her to school (serious homework overload, sleep deprivation, loss of play, erosion of family time).

EDU in Review seems to have a more accurate, albeit still not completely clear, picture of the “us vs them” stats on school days.

http://www.eduinreview.com/blog/2009/03/obama-proposes-longer-school-days-extended-school-year/

Homeschooling laws vary from state to state. In some states it’s quite easy; in others a nightmare of bureaucracy.

I haven’t read any of the posts, but I totally disagree with extending the school day. I’m sick of the philosophy ‘more is better’.

The schools are crammed with a lot of unnecessary BS as it is. They outta cut the crap and stick to the basics, and quit expecting the parents to micromanage everything.

As a former school teacher, didn’t you know that harvest time is mostly in the Autumn not Summer?

YES! Thank you for saying it, Lenore!! Sharing your thoughts on my FB!!

I attended a year of school in Spain at age 13: school from 9-1 & 3-6 (had to have siesta time), plus 9-1 Saturdays, It did me no harm, and I learned many things I wouldn’t here. I think a series of 2 week breaks might do more good than one long summer break. As I understand it, the idea will be NO homework – it will be done IN school, so out of school time will truly be the kids’.

The reason our kids are behind is not due to the time they spend in clasrooms, it’s due to the flawed education system (read: system not teachers) Our school system does not need a major overhaul it needs to be knocked down and completely redone. Get rid of all this extra testing, let teachers get creative with lesson plans, pay teachers by merit (get rid of the teachers union already), and give kids more leeway to guide their own education and work with the community. BTW, I don’t believe that more school time will lead to increased recess and band/art/sports programs. The increased cost to run longer school days will be used an excuse to cut these programs even more. Longer days means more test prep time. Yeah!!!

C, there are some areas of the country where an agrarian model is not outdated, and kids still do spend their summers working on the farm. If not farms, then family businesses. I grew up in a community that had a large influx of vacationers in the summer, and I spent every summer working in the family store because that’s when extra help was needed. Many of my classmates got summer jobs working at resorts and other summer businesses.

This still continues today.

It’s not an outdated model. Perhaps it’s not like that within the DC Beltway or Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood, but again we’re seeing the federal government trying to apply a one-size-fits-all solution.

“C, there are some areas of the country where an agrarian model is not outdated, and kids still do spend their summers working on the farm.”

THANK YOU Drew. To hear people talk about this issue, you’d think either that food grows on the grocery store shelves and no one needs to grow it any more, or the people silly enough to stay in farming can just lump it when their kids have to be in school instead of helping out (or maybe that people don’t realize how marginal many family farms are and that they really need the help of the older kids.) It’s not as though farming doesn’t exist anymore!

I’m sorry, but if we are going to ignore basic neuroscience in order to allow a very small percentage of the population to have their kids working on the farm, we are doing a huge disservice to the nation as a whole.

Further, it’s ludicrous to make comments denigrating others, and pretending that others “don’t know where food comes from.” Most food does not come from family farms, anymore. We can rue that if we want, but that’s not likely to change, and it makes no sense to continue long summer vacations for most kids, when that means schooling them in a very inefficient manner.

Big important issue. The debate will be long and hard.
My question is:

HOW WILL WE PAY FOR IT? I know if MY boss requires I work a longer day I will ask him to pay me more. Less vacation time? Right now in California teachers work from late August thru Late May. Average p[ay statewide $65,800. Ask them to lengthen their work day by 3 hours and work 8 extra weeks, that is going to cost a LOT!! Prop 13 holds property taxes to 0% increase effectively, income tax could go up, but with 12% unemployment in the state there is no money, hmm maybe the Federal govt can help?

I just cringed when I heard Obama’s take on longer school hours and shorter vacations. No, NO, and NOOOOOOO!!! I wish the school days were shorter and that summer was longer. When I was kid, summer was three whole months. I think my kids get 9 weeks off and it stinks. I also don’t get how kids lose knowledge over the summer. Maybe it’s who they’re living with that’s the problem. My kids swam swim team, practiced karate, went to the park, played outside, rode bikes and read tons and tons of books. And we got to spend time together as a family. I get so sick a tired of the schools thinking they can decide what all of us do in our time when our kids are away from school. Why should we all suffer because some DA is going to park their kid in front of the TV with a lunchable and a bag of chips every day for the whole summer. Why should this mean that my kids and I can’t go blueberry picking then go to the Reptile Zoo?

**How about more quality education taking place during the school day instead of the “busy work” that our kids are having to endure?! There would no longer be a “need” for longer school days and less summer. I don’t blame the teachers, its simply a broken system that is losing touch with reality more and more each year.**

As always, I am really impressed with everyone’s responses here–excellent and thoughtful points of view.

I’d like to add that Obama’s “longer school day” proposal is simply…naive. He just doesn’t know what he’s talking about. What kind of longer school day? A day full of test prep so No Child Will Be Left Behind? As has been mentioned, there’s lots of research out there showing that more time in the classroom does not mean more academic success. Title I, the Head Start program, has not made for more academically successful kids. Period. Does his longer school day mean more time with supervised extracurricular activities–including meals, counseling, tutoring, homework support? A kind of high-end, super duper daycare? Well, for many of the children in this country who live in poverty and with extremely dsyfuntional families/neighborhoods, this is a GREAT idea. But how will it be funded? And of course not every family needs that kind of community support anyway. And finally, many, many schools in our country–inner-city schools for lack of a better definition–are simply terrible. Why would more time in those schools be helpful?

So then, what is the point of a longer school day? I’m very disappointed in Obama. I sure hope A Longer School Day does not become the new No Child Left Behind–inadequately researched, inadequately funded, and just plain inadequate legislation which does not solve the problem.

And our country does have a problem: poverty and illegal drugs. How will a longer school day fix that?

Hey Delphine, I did pull my kids out of school and set them free and guess what? They are both doing math 2 grades higher than their school friends. And yes, they get tested in those higher grades and ace them every year.

Delphine — Earlier you talked about how your “school days” were 12 hours, but the thing is, you counted extracurricular activities within those school days. When I count extracurricular activities (for me, it was primarily basketball), then yes, I spent 12 or so hours at school, too. On away game nights, I often didn’t get home until 11pm or midnight because of how far we typically had to travel to play other schools and we’d go out to eat after.

The problem, here, though, is that there are a number of schools that can’t even afford to pay for even the classes that aren’t “hardcore academic classes” (history, science, English, etc), so they’ve cut out art, music, gym, etc. You were appalled that most of the kids in your American school couldn’t read music, it’s even worse in schools that don’t even HAVE music, anymore.

And other extracurricular activities, like sports, drama club, or debate team? Those were gone a long time ago. They were the FIRST things to get cut (that’s why art, music, and gym have now been cut, there’s nothing else TO cut).

These schools are run on a skeleton crew they call a faculty. 35 students in a classroom is not uncommon, especially in areas where the schools can barely afford to pay the faculty for the “hardcore” classes anymore.

As others have already said, who’s going to pay for the longer school days? If they can’t afford to pay for what they have NOW, what are they going to do if/when they have to add hours to the faculty’s payroll?

And really, what good will a 12 hour school day do if there’s nothing left to teach because there’s no one left to teach and all that’s available are the mandatory science, math, history, and English classes? Are they going to have 3-hour classes?

Well said, Dragonwolf. And Delphine, that brings up another point about children who have been freed from school. They have time and access to these programs that schools have cut. Our school day takes 2-3 hours a day which leaves a lot of free time. Through coops my children take piano and violin lessons, create art, sing and my daughter even learned how to sew, knit and crochet. She is now making a sweater for herself and she is only 11. They don’t teach that stuff in school anymore and those skills will help her forever. My children have many hours of “recess” each day.They also have time for sports since they are not spending all day in a classroom.

“I’m sorry, but if we are going to ignore basic neuroscience in order to allow a very small percentage of the population to have their kids working on the farm, we are doing a huge disservice to the nation as a whole.”

You keep bringing up this basic neuroscience, as if it’s the means to provide good education.

Let’s suppose for a moment it is.

Why would you expect schools to start implementing real means to good education now, when they haven’t managed to before? My point all along here is that tacking days or hours onto an inefficient system that is WORSE (as far as outcomes) than it was when kids spent FEWER days and hours in school solves NOTHING.

Besides, if you can figure out a way to get food to the population while driving the farming economy over the edge, then acting as though the needs of farming families are irrelevant in the big picture might work. Until then, it’s HIGHLY relevant.

pentamom: What I am bringing up in terms of neuroscience is very simple. Long breaks away from learning and skill building lead to the need for wasted time spent “reviewing” (relearning).

This does not mean that kids need to spend more time in school overall. It simply means that the summer break as it is currently implemented leaves us with a very inefficient system, no matter what other changes are made to it.

MervinMerton — I don’t agree that the breaks are the issue in the matter, though. In a “structured” learning situation, there are a number of flaws that keep children from remembering what they were taught. One of the primary obstacles is that most classes teach in a read/lecture setting. It’s been proven over and over that learning works best when it’s applied and when people also learn through doing, not just listening or reading.

Children are also expected to simply memorize, instead of understanding why something is the way it is. Yes, 8×4 is 32, but why is it 32?

I think that the class time itself needs to be spent on teaching kids to understand, instead of simply memorizing.

Finally, while pentamom’s particular situation speaks to only a small percentage of the population, it does bring up a much larger matter — blanket solutions won’t work everywhere.

I know of schools that have block scheduling (two 45 minute classes and two 90 minute classes, instead of eight 45 minute classes), where the block system works phenomenally. I also know of schools with it where the block system fails miserably.

Schools should be assessed on a school-by-school or at least district-by-district basis and figure out what works best for that district, because obviously, a school with year-round classes would work much better in a city or suburban district than it would in a farming community district.

K brings up another good point. I have often said that I may have put my son in an elementary school if he was gauranteed to have male teachers. Boys and girls do not learn alike. Do they learn to adjust, maybe. But would they thrive in an environment more conducive to them, I would think so. I am all for having boys and girls in seperate classes for elementary school.

I have a friend who is a teacher. She had men in her classes in college and she said it was fascinating to see the difference between them and the women. She said the men almost always had lesson plans that taught the kids through some type of movement. The women almost always had lectures, worksheets, reading and such. I am not saying either is wrong but it shows that men understand how boys learn because they were boys.

oh God, is that man going to force me to homeschool? Dang socialist pinko Commie. (Was that funny? I thought so…Ok, I love Obama and voted for him, but this is insane.)

I actually don’t think that longer school days are a problem. In our area the public middle schools and high schools let out on average at 2pm and some let out at 1pm with days starting as early as 7am.

I’m all in favor of adjusting a school day to 8am-4pm. More time at school doesn’t mean more time in class. It can mean more time for recess, art, music, extra-help periods for students and teachers to meet outside of classroom time, etc.

Let’s not be reactionary about what a “longer day” means until we see how it’s going to be filled.

My daughter is almost 5 years old and goes to pre-school from 8:30am-4pm. She does several hours of academic oriented work in there, but also has plenty of playground time, music, dance, art, karate, and even free-play time all at school. She loves it and sometimes doesn’t want to come home at the end of the day.

I hate this issue. It engenders bad feelings every way you look at it. All this “kids should be out there in the world, not stuck in school” stuff is pie-in-the-sky thinking to people like me, who have office jobs that for some strange reason don’t think 2:15 is a good time to end the day…not to mention the at-least-once-a-month minimum-day thrown in to really screw up my schedule. Clovers? Really? That’s all well and good for the kids of stay-at-home parents, but in my world…less school means more time shoved in some piss-poor-but-affordable afterschool program, where my kid will bide his time until he’s of an age that he can be home by himself. Maybe THEN it would be nice, but now? It’s just ugly and it makes me feel bad, and all these outraged comments just reinforce the divide between the ‘haves’ (people who have the luxury of being home with their children and thus might appreciate the extra time) and the ‘have-nots.’

For the record, though…I think the idea of longer days in the classroom being used to eliminate homework is a brilliant one. Won’t happen, but I’d sure vote for that.

Sorry, my husband is a teacher, and summer vacation is a freaking travesty.

We need year round schools with reasonable breaks instead of an incredibly long break where children forget everything they learned and have to spend 1-2 months reviewing their academics.

I may be a free range kid proponent, but I also think we need stronger academics, longer hours in the upper grades, and no more stupid, agrarian-based summer breaks.

Maybe the schools should teach math the way every other generation learned it. All these new ideas add many steps and make it more confusing, IMO.

I wonder why people advocating things like longer school days while comparing us to Asian countries leave out the single most important factor in determining student success:

Parents.

You need parents that are supportive and respectful of the teachers, something that large portions of our society has decided it is no longer going to do. I guarantee you that in these countries that are supposedly out performing us, that you have both these things.

@ Maureen – I wholeheartedly agree.

Great job on an EXCELLENT column! I’m a high school teacher and an author, on leave for a semester to promote my work and complete other writing projects. So for the first time ever, I’m directly exposed to the “helicopter parents” who have taken the opportunity to congratulate me for staying at home bc they would never leave their child ‘with a stranger’ as I apparently did years ago.

Anyway, keep up the great work. Re shorter summer vacations – kids need to learn to be creative on their own. So much of what we do in school is directly related to parental abdication of real responsibilities. Re test scores: no other nation on the planet aims to challenge as vast and diverse a population. I think we’re doing a super job. let’s keep in mind all the foreign students who flock to U.S. universities to be educated . . . by those who have succeeded in our public schools system.

Homeschooled students are often billed as far more intelligent than their public school counterparts, and they generally have shorter school days and years. My example: I had all Tuesdays off because of a bowling group I was involved with, and I didn’t have school some days because I went to the mall with my family or something like that; generally finished a full school day around 2:00pm, when my contemporaries finished around 4:00.

Thank goodness for Montessori upper and lower elementary where children learn to think for themselves and develop a desire to learn for learnings sake while in school!

Home-schooled children are usually more advanced because it’s either a one-on-one or a smaller group setting with open discussion instead of 25 – 30 students in a more rigidly structured environment.

I didn’t home school my children but I did teach them in the times that we were together and it helped them in school. There were several times that my children told me they either taught their teacher something or, at least, surprised their teacher by knowing something that hadn’t been taught in class yet.

One thing the school as daycare argument is missing ~ while an extended school day might be a great daycare solution for many 2 (or single) parent working families, it will be a disaster for others. Many low income families work evenings, nights and weekends. Keeping kids in school until 5pm or whatever the proposal would be would actually prevent many families from spending any time whatsoever together with their kids or at minimum greatly reduce their time together.

What a great discussion! Here is my take: When prescribing education for a whole country, there is an underlying assumption that each child can all handle the same subjects and time away from home. But in reality education is not a one size fits all.

I homeschool my kids and being with them every day I have come to know their learning styles, interests, strengths and weaknesses, maturity levels, personality style and can tailor their academics to match what they need. Some days they are tired and we do less, some days they are enthusiastic and we do more. We are like a small boat and can change course quickly and easily when necessary. A massive school system that caters to groups of 20-30 kids at once can’t do this. To this end I think less school is better than more.

Of course that depends on parents being willing to be involved in their kids lives. I am sure there are parents who don’t want to or can’t take that time for their kids, but it seems harsh to punish some kids with more school just because other kids have parents who want/need the educators to do more. But again, this is the nature of a huge ship that tries to take care of everyone at the same time. I feel bad for those parents trapped on that ship wishing they could make it better for their own children who are either bored in school, not being taught life skills like self reliance or how to use a scissors etc. The best thing they can do is get off the ship and onto their own boat and create that freedom for their own.

Quantity does not make up for a lack of quality. There are many reasons why kids in the US under-perform. My totally uninformed guess would be:

1) Large classroom sizes. Kids don’t get individual attention and teachers have to slow down to the speed of the low-average group. This means that high-performing kids aren’t allowed to blossom at their own rate, and under-performing kids can’t get the help they need to keep up.

2) Quality of material suffers under political fighting. So many areas in the US now have teachers who are afraid to discuss many topics with their kids because of potential backlash. It’s not just science, but history too, and it bleeds into many other courses.

3) No one wants to hurt kids’ feelings. Kids lack the confidence to try new things and risk failing because they are constantly told that they are “smart” and “good at art” etc. They don’t want to contradict that image we’re giving them, so they don’t do anything that might make them appear the opposite. By trying to preserve their self-esteem, we’re actually destroying it!

4) Kids spend more time in school and, compared to many countries, parents spend more time at work. More time at work means less time at home interacting with kids. It’s been shown again and again that kids who interact more with their parents, who are read to, etc. out-perform those who don’t have available parents. Give workers more time off and maybe we’ll see more high-performing kids.

What we need isn’t more quantity. We need quality – in our schools and in our social lives in general.

Unfortunately, Obama’s track record so far on solving social problems seems to be:
-Make a speech
-Throw money/time at it

I don’t have much hope that he’ll realize these two aren’t particularly effective if the underlying issues aren’t dealt with first.

Having taught in Japan, I would never, ever want my children to go through a system like that one (and I was at a “good school”). Education is highly cultural and there are some elements at play in Asia which would not work in an American setting. 40 kids per classroom works there because kids are taught respect for others and the value of “the group” very early on. And all those complaints about teaching to the test only? That’s why kids in Japan score so high- teachers teach the test, and nothing else. So what if the kids don’t know how to apply the knowledge, or if it’s irrelevant? If they can answer a question about the teacup used by the famous diplomat on the day he signed the so-and-so, they must be brilliant! They’re not in school just to learn subjects: Japan has used its school system to indoctrinate its populace since before the 19th century. Those nifty uniforms we admire are modeled on the Prussian army (from before any major world wars). The length of the school day is long and the cultural emphasis on school so great that kids have a greater dedication to their school than they do to their families. The longer school day wouldn’t work the same way in our individualistic cultural context.

Asian schooling is not something I want spreading to America. I think the problem is that we have a cultural identity crisis and have pulled the schools in too many different directions. I’d like to see a more European system, personally, with tracking from the very beginning and vocational training starting in high school for students who aren’t interested in academics. Regardless of what our system becomes, I don’t plan to homeschool my kids. But I do plan to help them with homework or add something to what they learn every day. Education has to be valued to become valuable.

Nimmy – Could you tell me about tracking? Someone at the rink mentioned it when I brought this topic up but I’m not sure exactly what it is. I think I know but I don’t want to comment until I’m sure I’ve got it right.

Oh, and one more thing Obama! I am a teacher, and I am already at school for at least eight hours a day teaching, tutoring, attending parent meetings and SST’s, doing my outdoor duty/supervision, working my required extracurricular team activities, and dealing with the many other paperwork items that fall outside of the regular curriculum. I work through my lunch every day. In addition to all of this, I spend nearly two hours per night grading, and hours upon hours planning my lessons (including the creation/development of handouts, copying the handouts for distribution, and purchasing my own technology since the district won’t provide it). My average day of work lasts 10-11 hours every day now. Oh, and did I fail to mention that I am a loving mother, wife, and friend? I try to spend my other waking hours helping my children to develop into those creative, intelligent, independent thinkers that we hope will be contributing members of society. If you extend my day by two to three hours, just exactly how will I do it? Oh, I know, just give up sleep, right? Teachers work harder than almost any group I know (and I have worked in other industries). We are concerned, caring, and diligent individuals who are already being asked to do the impossible, all under the microscope of public scrutiny (most of the public has no idea about the pervasiveness of the job), and with little to no respect from society. Why not just kill us now? How about parent involvement? What a concept!

I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, I think that longer school days are useless unless there is also a renewed emphasis on quality teaching. And by quality I don’t mean “learn this because it’s on the sate mandated test.”

On the other, I spent two years running a “homeschool” group for 10 very much at risk middle graders shortly after I turned 18. Their parents knew and trusted me because I’d started the youth programme they were all in three years earlier so they’d drop the kids off at 6AM and then pick them up again around 8PM every day except major holidays (Christmas, New Year’s Day, Thanksgiving, Independence Day). The kids had started off barely literate, but all of them were placed on the high honours track when they moved on to high school and all received scholarships to top tier universities.

Do I think the longer days were the only reason they succeeded? Not at all. However, it did help. It’s very hard to get involved with gangs and drugs when you spend all of your time studying. The problem is, that only works if it’s implemented in a very specific way in very specific areas. That’s the issue with public education in general, there’s no good way to accommodate everyone.

@ Mae Mae

Wikipedia gives a good overview:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracking_(education)

In short, I like to think of it as grouping students by evaluated ability in order to be able to vary teaching techniques and materials to better serve them.

I should note that I attended tracked schools myself but the difference in student ability was not obvious until high school. In elementary school, students would be moved to a more advanced section if they worked hard (or to a less advanced section if they were lazy), and it was possible to be in different tracks for different subjects. Evaluation occurred several times a year, or at the request of a teacher (usually unbeknownst to the student, not strictly written testing). Also, parents could request that their children be evaluated and/or simply admitted to a more advanced track. IIRC, most of the parents who did so were Asian, and the kids were just expected to perform. It worked out for most of them. In middle school, students chose their own classes and the only class grouped by track was reading/literature. In high school students also chose, and there were not so much tracked classes as ones with and without prerequisites (which you could fulfill over the summer if you chose). The only disservice I ever saw was when budget cuts demolished a disproportionate amount of the vocational classes. I never got to take shop because of that.

Nimmy — Tracking sounds like a great idea.

My husband and I were the type in high school that didn’t have to put much thought into our school work because school wasn’t challenging enough for us. Now, my little brother is in danger of not graduating on time because he’s so bored with school’s lack of challenge that he’d rather go to work at the research and development company he works for, because it’s more interesting.

I think all three of us could have benefited from some sort of tracking system that would put us in classes that would be more engaging to us, and I agree that all kids would benefit, because, like you said, the fast-learners would be dragged down by the slow-learners and both could learn closer to their own pace.

I know some high schools have a rudimentary form of this, in the form of different levels of classes (Applied, Academic, Advance Placement), but many schools can’t offer all three for all classes, and scheduling conflicts sometimes don’t allow for someone to be in the appropriate class for them.

For example, my school offered Applied and Academic Physics. I should have been, and wanted to be in Academic, but because I chose to attend vocational classes (otherwise I’d end up with like half a day of study hall, because nothing else that was offered that didn’t conflict with my selection of core classes, which included AP English, interested me), the Applied class was the only one available to me. I got lucky and had a teacher that knew me and knew my abilities and let me read what interested me, because he knew the class was below my level.

I think, if nothing else, we need to improve funding to schools to allow for a better selection of courses and at least allow for the Applied/Academic/AP tracks to be available in at least the required courses.

The big problem with tracking is that historically, kids were assigned to tracks based on what side of the tracks they lived on. The only way to avoid this would be to use double-blind techniques where the people assigning kids to tracks don’t know anything about the kid’s family background or physical appearance.

Another problem is that at early ages, kids’ demonstrated abilities greatly depend on how fast they mature. If a kid doesn’t have a developmental disability, then there’s very little relationship between how early they demonstrate certain cognitive skills and where they wind up as an adult. This problem is confounded by enrollment cutoff dates: a kid who was born one day after the cutoff is going to be almost a year older than one who was born the day before the cutoff, and in the early grades there’s an awful lot of maturation that can take place in that time.

Finally, kids’ abilities aren’t uniform. Most tracking systems put an enormous amount of weight on reading ability, so a kid who’s a poor reader (or slow in reading maturation, which is often simply a matter of having a Y chromosome) but great in math is going to be assigned to a track for kids who are poor in both.

And research shows that once a tracking decision is made, it’s pretty permanent: evidence that a kid is more capable than he was originally thought to be tends to get discounted, and in many cases a low-tracked kid’s demonstration of higher abilities is interpreted as “acting out.”

So tracking is one of those things that looks good in theory, but falls apart in practice.

It’s 12:44am. The third day my child has gotten only six hours sleep. And six at this school is considered a luxury. Unlike many parents at my daughter’s high school, this does not sit well with me and it tears my heart out each night. Especially because I feel so bad, I’m up right alongside her.

Why is she up so late? Is she watching tv? Nope. Is she on a computer game? Nope. Is she reading, her favorite pastime? Nope. She’s up late every single night, crushed under a mountain of homework.

Let’s not kid ourselves. Her school has been lengthened a long time ago. Except in this scenario, it’s sent home to the family and the parents are the involuntary unpaid teacher aides. Longer school day alright, except she’s doing all the work, teaching a lot of this stuff to herself. Just what do they do in school all day?

Do I support a longer school day? Over all, school wastes so much time. Our high school deviates from the norm but to generalize, most high schools have seven hour days. If they waste seven hours, what guarantee is there they won’t waste nine?

If school could hire better teachers, eliminate the fluff and time wasters, use every minute wisely and then still seriously contend they need more time, I’m all for an extra two hours ONLY if all the work gets done in school and nothing comes home. I’d rather have her home at five with no homework than homework marathons that far exceed time spent in school.

I can see an occasional engrossing long range project that would captive my daughter’s imagination. I could see a group project that just can’t be done during school hours. But this relentless daily homework grind, all weekend and holidays too? Even summer is no longer safe. No way, had enough of that.

I am a college student who has just heard about this proposed idea of a longer school day from non other than my 11 years old sister. I find Obama’s idea inconceivable!!! Students today go to school for at least 7 hours a day, which almost the number of hours for a full-time work week and that does not take into account homework time or if the child is involved in a after school activity, how much extra time that takes up. Most classes give an absolute minimum of an hour of homework a night, no matter what day, a student always has something they could be doing. By making school days longer, sure they will be in classes for a longer amount of time, but teachers will still be giving out homework, since that is a good determinant on how well students understand the classroom material. So instead of getting out of school at 2:30, they get out at 4:30/5pm, they still have homework to do so instead of adding 2/3 hours of school Obama would be effectively adding 5 hours at least to a students day. Also other countries have higher math and science scores than we do in the US. This does not fully relect on our school system because who is in the school system…the students!!! Our school systems can only teach the materials, if students are not willing to put in the time and the work necessary to excel at school, then no matter what schools become our scores will stay the same. And in addition to that, everyone I know was a self-motivated student. My friends who were amazing in thier classes did so because they wanted to be the best, they even made competitions in school rankings trying to achieve #1. Also discussed earlier was the advanced classes offered in schools. I loved all the advanced classes I was able to take, especially in highschool, they were challenging and really helped me to become a more focused and diligent student, but the teachers for these classes are swamped with students. Usually there are no designated AP, Pre-AP teachers, these people have to make up various class layouts, because they have 2 or 3 differrent classes that they have to teach, and in addition to have an overload in the classroom, most Pre-AP/AP teachers have a higher level of learning than other level/normal level classes. That is a needed aspect since they are to go more indepth and challenge high school students who are very likely to question everything they are to teach. O and to touch on what Judith said from above about her daughter with so much homework, I had friend who were taking 6 AP classes. For everyone who does not know, these are college level highschool classes that promise pretty much at least 10 hours of home work a week for each class, depending on the subject. So to do that math: 60 hours of homework a week, with 35 hours of classes, thats 95 hours a week devoted to school. That far exceeds many parents work weeks. Students go through the hell of all those classes because they themselves are driven to excel, they want to get in the best position possible so that when they go to apply to college, they will be able to pick and choose. One of my friends who had the busiest schedule i had ever heard of took 6 ap classes, was in the school band, on the school soccer team, on the school crosscountry team, in a club soccer team, and was part of the academy of science and technology attached to my school, which in that she participated in science fair, and add to that she had a part time job at the local community college as a tutor in statistics (her job her senior year of highschool). Now no one can say she has any more time in a day to to school, or really has to sleep when she average a daily maybe 3 hours of sleep a night. And I almost forgot, shortening summer break…horrendous. I always looked forward to summer, hanging out with my friends, going on vacations…and my parents are divorced so I had to split my time between my mom and my dad…most of the time my summer went by way to fast, to shorted that would really burn the kids out, especially the ones serious about school who give so much during the year. To go forward with Obama’s idea of lenghening the school year would not fix the problem of our poor test scores…it would just be VERY costly program that would not procure the results he is looking for.

I find that the skills you mentioned are of great importance. However, the only skill the administration cares about is competitive skills. Just about their only concern is “can we compete?” For what students need to compete for, I’m not sure. These people’s priorities are all wrong. Cooperation, consensus, community and sharing are far more important than competing for who knows what.

Wow, this is the last thing I want. I’m a Junior in High School right now with 5 honors classes and Spanish 3. I wouldn’t have even taken the stupid Spanish class if colleges did not like 3 years of foreign languange. Usually, between my school day and walking home (30 min) is about 7:30-3:00. The day does not even begin until I start my homework, however. I usually get 1 hour of Honors Pre-Calc a night, 2 hours of AP US history twice a week, 2 hours of AP Biology once a week, 2.5 hours of AP Art History a week, and about 1-2 hours of English a week. That adds to about 3 hours of homework every night, so in essence my school day is 7:30-6:00. And I don’t even take any extra-curricular activities. Heck, I’m still working on homework when my dad comes home from work. I just had to finish 5 essays for AP Biology, and that took up a bit of time. Once I finish my homework, I usually just play video games or watch T.V. with my family.

Some of my classmates work faster than I do, but most of them have lower grades. I am only 1 of 2 people in my AP Bio class with an A. And because I’m in California, the class sizes are huge (30+ in most classes) and have plenty of Asians. A lot of kids don’t even seem to do homework because they are too lazy.

One of the problems associated with foreign schools is that for them, High School is esentially equal to a full load of AP/Honors classes for us. My Algebra 2 teacher who used to teach in Japan stated that students in foreign nations who don’t pass a certain test don’t get sent to High School, they get sent to trade school. Poorer countries might not even have trade school. So what we essentially have is a bunch of dumb @$$ college prep students in the same schools as us, and we get lumped all together while most foreign kids don’t even get to go to school, and the ones who do end up becoming researchers and business leaders and such.

I gotta agree with AshleyL, this idea is idiotic. What schools need to do is give less homework and give us more flexible schedules with our curriculum. Being a math/science guy, I’d totally love if I could scrap English, art and Spanish for a subject like Environmental Science or Triginometry or engineering, or a !@#$ing hell yea for zoology.

under my estamation i think that adding hours to shool will not resalve anything. who agrees with will uderstand me and whgo dosent well sucks for you.

hez making school way harder and worse

this isnt right at all kids should be able to choose