"Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular idea," President Obama told the the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in a speech earlier this year, "Not with Malia and Sasha not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."
The President's remarks we reinforced by recent comments made by his Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan who told the Associated Press: "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today."
According to the AP article:
Taken together President Obama and Secretary Duncan's statements point to a possible move by the Federal government to regulate the number of days children spend in school.Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.
"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests — Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
Already, local school districts feel the intrusion of federal guidelines with No Child Left Behind. If mandated, such a move would probably be instituted by making the availability of federal funds contingent on making sure that kids were in the classroom for a set number of hours.
While many children would surely protest initially maybe in time it would become just a part of life. Parents who work might actually benefit because they wouldn't have to think about providing as much after school/summer care for their children.
A big question would be whether teachers would be expected to do more work for the same amount of pay, and where the money would come from to keep schools open longer.
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According to my (admittedly quick & dirty) calculations, a typical elementary school student in Norwalk spends about 1,095 hours annually in school (180 days times 6 hours 5 minutes daily). Perhaps in those countries with more school days there is more continuity to the learning process due to fewer days off. I would be interested to hear how much time outside of school children in Japan & the other places mentioned above spend on homework & other academic pursuits outside of school. I don't mean to overgeneralize, but it seems that many children are scheduled to the hilt with extracurricular activities that aren't academic in nature, that would seem to leave little energy to do more than the bare minimum of academic work outside of the classroom.
ReplyDeleteA couple of thoughts - it's going to be VERY expensive to add more time to the school day. Then, there are many businesses that cater to children in the afternoon - dance, drama, tutoring clubs, etc. Would they be out of business? This is not a well-thought out plan.
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