From Newsweek: "
American schoolkids attend school for fewer days than children in other educationally advanced countries, a situation President Obama said Monday needs to change. “I think we should have a longer school year,” Obama said in response to a question from the Today show’s Matt Lauer during a White House interview that kicked off the network’s weeklong “Education Nation” focus on American schools. Noting that many of our economic competitors keep their kids in school for an additional month a year, Obama said he believes “that month makes a difference.” He added that research shows many students “are losing a lot of what they learn during the school year” over summer break, and that the loss “is especially severe for poor kids. A longer school year makes sense.”http://www.newsweek.com/2010/09/27/obama-calls-for-a-longer-school-year.htmlThe current school year in the United States dates back to close to when the country was founded. The school calender, with summers off, is due to farmers who wanted their kids available during the summer to work on the family farm.
But now, we don't have many family farms and most of those farms have employees, so the reasoning for the summer vacations is no longer valid. Now, the main reason we have summers off is because of the tourist industry. We don't see it so much in Las Vegas, but in cities like Wisconsin Dells, where they rely on kids to help out during the summer.
Clearly, a longer school will benefit the children and the family. Shoot, after a month of summer vacation, most kids are bored. Yes, there are things to do in most communities during the summer, but most kids still get bored.
In the Clark County School District, because of overcrowding, some schools are on a 12 month school year. In general, a student will go to school for about 8 weeks and then take 4-6 weeks off. That's not a bad system for students and teachers. It would be a pain for other employees such as administrators, custodians, transportation and assorted other employees. It will also be a pain for teachers, administrators and other employees who want to go back to college during the summer. Finally, if a student fails a class, it makes it more difficult for a student to make up the class during summer school or at another time.
So, what to do? I like the way the Amish schedule school. They go to school, with no holidays, except Christmas Eve, Eve and Easter off. They don't have any Winter or Spring breaks and staff development days are laughed at. They do have weekends off. They go to school from September to April. Of course, I would just extend the school, to just one month off and it would not have to be during the summer. I would have a couple of small breaks thrown in around Christmas and Easter. In Las Vegas, the best time off for a break would be during the summer. In Wisconsin, it may be during the winter, to save money on fuel costs.
The other alternative would be the 12 month school. Eight weeks of school with 4 weeks off is a possibility. But if you are going to do this, then you have to also coordinate with the different colleges, so I just don't see that happening.
Of course, who will pay for the extra costs? It will cost billions of dollars to do this. Will the Fed's mandate it and then pass the costs to the local school districts? The Fed's won't even pay their share of special education, like they promised, so why would we think that they would pay for the added costs of an extended school year? Further, how will the curriculum change? Will they teach the same things but over a longer period of time or will they add more things to the curriculum and completely redo curriculum throughout K-12 education?
So, I give credit where credit is due. President Obama brought up the idea and I hope he pursues it, instead of playing politics with the issue. So, let's have a longer school year and have the kids learn more. Have the students learn more and increase graduation standards and make us more competitive with the rest of the world.
