Is 180 days the right amount to be in school? Would extra days spent learning help students lacking in basic skills catch up to their classmates that are ahead of them? These are questions, as educators, we all tend to struggle with. About 1,000 schools are currently experimenting with a longer school day and year with mixed results. Students attend school from 7:30am-5pm, 11 months out of the year. Schools experimenting with this new extended schedule are primarily urban schools that are trying to close the academic gap with their counterparts.
"Poorer students need extra time to compete with middle-class students" says Sociology professor Karl Alexander "the key is using the time wisely". This rings true for any academic situation. How many hours get wasted by teachers and students during the year when we plan poorly or have disruptions we have to deal with in our individual classrooms. Some of it we can't help, but certain situations are within our control. The key to closing the gap with many of these under performing schools is funding and using time and resources to the best of our ability. Marc Mannella, CEO of the Philadelphia Charter School says he made a longer school year mandatory because students were joining the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) 2-3 grade levels lower than their current grade. The push towards longer school years reminds me a lot of what Head Start was originally intended to accomplish.
While most people want to claim a longer school year is beneficial, some areas have noticed mixed results. For example, the Miami-Dade school district tested a similar program for three years in 39 of their under performing schools and claimed higher rates of student and teacher burnout, as well as a higher rate of abscences when the summer first started. Another problem that arose from the extended school year was the feeling of punishment by students that were performing just fine in school.
While a longer school year seems like it could be the answer to academic short comings, it may not be. I think a better solution would be increased funding and training to educators in under performing schools. If you work on something for extended hours but you are not doing it right or don't have the right tools, it doesn't matter. Somehow, we need to have all public schools caught up to each other in the resources they have. The article today on military funded public schools, offered some great insight to the structure and discipline needed in some of these schools that are lacking in academic performance.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
There are a number of concepts and ideas floating around about this topic with the general theme being our kids just are not in school enough. I happen to think the problem isn't so much the length of the year as the way it is laid out or scheduled. I don't think a longer year would hurt but to me it's the traditional 9 months on/3 months off set up that really is the problem. After 3 months off it takes weeks to get them back on track and where they should be academically. THe long break has basically emptied their heads of what they learned the year before and they have to be retaught before the new year can start. Then, because the kids are tuned into summer vacation and the exact day it starts, you start to lose them with a month to go in school. The last week particularly is a joke. At the same time these are kids and the folks that say they get burnt out are correct. 11 months of 7:30 to 5 classes is just too much.
ReplyDeleteWhat we should do is reconstruct the year so it is more consistant, there are now huge breaks that lead to lost comprehension and attention and the addition of more days to the schedule. I thought a good way to do it would to do more of a 6 on 1 off schdule based on weeks. Six weeks on, 1 off. The kids would get plenty of breaks evenly spaced so they would cause less distraction, they wouldn't be long enough to have them lose much,and there would be a consistancy to it that would help quite a bit.
Jim-6 on 1 off wouldn't be a bad deal. Also, parents know when they are getting a week off and family trips and such could be planned then. I had a number of students that missed 4 days here, a week there for trips. We had a week off for spring break this year and I had a kid miss the very first week back because his brother at another school had break then and they were going on a family trip.
ReplyDeleteThe nine month school year is a relic of the past. It is a tradition born out of a nation of farmers. Children and teens left school to plant and harvest crops. This was a much more labor-intensive process that required the whole family structure’s efforts to accomplish. If I am not mistaken students a century ago returned to school in the month of July. That can be a slower time for farmers. Farm boys and girls were also excited to be at school and practice because it was an escape from chores. That is still true for many in farming families today. All in all it is an antiquated system that no longer has a rationale. Our school year could be much longer. Many European countries require an extra year of primary school education and even public service. Japan has a much more rigorous schooling system. They go many more days, including Saturdays. Way more homework is required, even over summer vacations. Students go to special cram schools and families hire tutors to pass extremely important tests. Good scores on these entrance examinations are required to get into the best schools. This includes kindergarten. Japan is a much different country to the U.S. It has a huge population, very little land, and tremendous competition for every type of resource. We have much to learn from them. However, I believe our system is much different.
ReplyDeleteI am sort of a conspiracy theorist. I believe many governments try to create a “crisis of confidence” among their citzenry. Essentially, they desire political gain and whip people in hysterics to do so. Here are some key examples. JFK was partially elected on the “missile gap.” He used fear mongering to paint the Eisenhower Republicans as soft on communism. The Russians were winning the Cold War. President Bush used the isolated 9/11 attacks to deny our civil liberties and start a war in Iraq. Yes, I am ranting and it is uncouth to be so political. During the last half-century our public schools have supposedly fell behind our rivals. The Soviet Union put the first satellite and man in space. As a result our government poured millions into science and math. Our schools delineated from the arts and humanities. It was called back to basics. I do think Head Start continues to be a great equalizer among the haves and have nots. Low income children are denied equal access to many resources. Education is their only way out of poverty. Japan’s economic miracle of the 1970s and 1980s resulted in similar poltical reactions. Could our public schools be better? Absolutely without a doubt. I think teachers are doing a great job. My mother, who has taught for over thirty years agrees. She says teachers are much more dynamic and qualified than in the past.
I agree that more adequate funding of schools is a solution. Teachers shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket for classroom materials. I once read an average teacher spends $400 of their own money on classroom materials. We could also make use of our time more wisely. Teachers could be paid more, which would lead to more motivated, dynamic young people to enter the field. Parents could also become more involved in their children’s lives. These are all idealistic answers, but would achieve just as much as more hours and says in a desk.
I do not think longer days and schooling all year around is the answer in closing the achievement gap. I would suspect teachers and students would burn out rather quickly without a prolonged break. If teachers were expected to work through the summer this would drive teachers away from the profession because they would seek higher paying job elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteI can see the point that extended practice by extended the school year could raise achievement in students, but as you wrote about in your blog students without problems will feel as if they are being punished. Students who are not working to their full potential can partake in summer school to properly catch up with their peers. Finally, the system we have in place worked for hundreds of years and I do not think it is necessary to change the format of our education system.
There has been much discussion on a longer school year, yet a fairly local school district did just the opposite. I believe it was either a year or two ago that Lemmon, SD shortened their school week. The kids now go to school only four days a week and the fifth day is for things like makeup, tutoring, etc. I know this originally started as a way to save money on school lunch, bussing, and the like. Does anyone live in that area that could give a report on how this has been working out for Lemmon?
ReplyDeleteI too believe that while a longer school year isn't going to be beneficial, change does need to be made to the current school year. This is needed in order to eliminate the "brain drain" that occurs over long breaks and causes teachers to have to do reviews in order to get students caught back up again. It's true that the current school year set-up was formed in order for students to help with farming. I wonder what percentage of students these days are still needed to help with farming. Problem is, having a school year such as the one Jim Nyland suggested would cause issues in other areas, such as for working parents who would then need to find daycare.
ReplyDeleteAs for making the best use of what time we have, ensuring that teachers are making the most of their classroom times by planning wisely and having someone in the school to deal with classroom disruptions by removing that student so the teacher can do what they are being paid to do are both sound ideas.