President Obama's education secretary might have a hard time selling his new plan to kids, but parents should be jumping on board.
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has floated the idea of extending the school year, positing the idea that the reason American kids fare poorly in comparison to other nations is because China, India and the like send their kids to school more days out of the year.
But kids shouldn't put the blame all on Duncan. The new education secretary is joining a long line of education officials looking to keep kids in school. Minnesota superintendents put forth a proposal last year that would increase the state's classroom time from one hundred seventy-five days to two hundred. A group in Delaware is pushing that state to add one hundred forty extra hours of classroom time to its schedule. In Pennsylvania, there's talk of extending Philadelphia's school year to ten and a half months, while Chicago's mayor has suggested a year-round school system.
Meanwhile, some states are taking the other tack. A series of bills in front of the Indiana General Assembly would actually shorten the school year - and administrators aren't happy with the idea.
Shorter school years - longer breaks - have been associated with a lack of retained knowledge. Teachers say there's a lack of time to adequately prepare their students - leading to the "teaching to the test" mentality driven by No Child Left Behind. And kids simply aren't able to achieve to the highest standards. As the 1983 Education Department report "A Nation At Risk" pointed out, "history isn't kind to idlers."
At the same time, studies have shown kids benefit from shorter school WEEKS. An extra day off in districts that have shifted to four-day weeks boosts student performance as well as student morale.
Parents complain that shorter weeks are a daycare hassle, but so are extended breaks. So maybe the answer is longer school years, made up of shorter weeks? Give the kids a three-day weekend, providing one day a week that parents have to pay for daycare instead of ten straight weeks of daycare in the summer (which amounts to about fifty days of daycare - about the same as one Friday per week for fifty-two weeks).
Image: CNN
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