Sunday, October 04, 2009
Editorial: An academic exercise over school days
Longer and more school days could boost achievement, as the president suggests. But who would pay the bill?
From the RoundTable blog
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Pay attention, public school students, the president has plans for your day. No, he's not giving another pep talk encouraging you to do your best in school like the one that got some of your parents all bent out of shape.
This time the president wants to seriously cut into your free time. His education secretary (Arne Duncan, for those of you who wish to scribble down his name in case it appears on a pop quiz) is pushing for longer school days and for more days in the school year.
"Six hours a day just doesn't cut it," he said. Yes, Roanoke County students, he's talking about your short day. And, yes, Roanoke city students, we know you're forced to sit an extra 50 minutes in class, but it isn't all that impressive to education bigwigs.
All of you, according to the Brookings Institution, could benefit from just 10 minutes more crunching numbers. Your math scores would shoot upward.
So how much time should kids spend in class? Virginia law says at least five hours and 30 minutes a day for 180 days.
Duncan hasn't said how much time students should spend in class, but kids in one nationwide network of charter schools go from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. each weekday, every other Saturday and for three weeks in the summer. They rock on state exams.
No mention was made in news reports as to whether there's much time left in the day for homework, sports, dance lessons, after-school jobs or just hanging out and enjoying childhood.
Duncan also suggested that schools look to year-round schedules, with shorter summer breaks, instead of sticking with the old 180 days devised back when we were a nation of farmers, and kids were needed at home to tend the crops. Now they're just needed at the amusement parks, as both employees and customers.
Our economy today depends on brains rather than brawn. Yet our nation remains wedded, where school is concerned, to the agrarian economy. No wonder the country is flummoxed about how to develop more scholars.
Duncan might be on to something. It might be worth discussing changing the school year. But it can't be strictly an academic exercise.
There's one huge stumbling block that might prove more resistant than a whiny ninth-grader forced to sit through 15 more minutes of English class: money.
Longer days and longer years will require substantially more funding. Even school kids know how resistant state, local and federal governments have been to providing that.
