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Education

Will a Longer School Year Help or Hurt U.S. Students? (Take the Poll)

Jan. 13, 2013 4:30pm Billy Hallowell

(TheBlaze/AP) — Did your kids moan that winter break was way too short as you got them ready for the first day back in school? They might get their wish of more holiday time off under proposals catching on around the country to lengthen the school year.

But it won’t be entirely palatable, as there’s a catch: a much shorter summer vacation.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a chief proponent of the longer school year, says American students have fallen behind the world academically.

“Whether educators have more time to enrich instruction or students have more time to learn how to play an instrument and write computer code, adding meaningful in-school hours is a critical investment that better prepares children to be successful in the 21st century,” he said in December when five states announced they would add at least 300 hours to the academic calendar in some schools beginning this year.

The three-year pilot project will affect about 20,000 students in 40 schools in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee.

Will a Longer School Year Help or Hurt U.S. Students?

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett surprised students as he visited his old classroom at the Pine Grove Area High School, Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013 in Pine Grove, Pa. Credit: AP

Proponents argue that too much knowledge is lost while American kids wile away the summer months apart from their lessons. The National Summer Learning Association cites decades of research that shows students’ test scores are higher in the same subjects at the beginning of the summer than at the end.

“The research is very clear about that,” said Charles Ballinger, executive director emeritus of the National Association for Year-Round School in San Diego. “The only ones who don’t lose are the upper 10 to 15 percent of the student body. Those tend to be gifted, college-bound, they’re natural learners who will learn wherever they are.”

Supporters also say a longer school year would give poor children more access to school-provided healthy meals.

Yet the movement has plenty of detractors – so many that Ballinger sometimes feels like the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.

“I had a parent at one meeting say, `I want my child to lie on his back in the grass watching the clouds in the sky during the day and the moon and stars at night,’” Ballinger recalled. “I thought, `Oh, my. Most kids do that for two, three, maybe four days, then say, `What’s next?’”‘

But opponents aren’t simply dreamy romantics.

Besides the outdoor opportunities for pent up youngsters, they say families already are beholden to the school calendar for three seasons out of four. Summer breaks, they say, are needed to provide an academic respite for students’ overwrought minds, and to provide time with family and the flexibility to travel and study favorite subjects in more depth. They note that advocates of year-round school cannot point to any evidence that it brings appreciable academic benefits.

Credit: AP

“I do believe that if children have not mastered a subject that, within a week, personally, I see a slide in my own child,” said Tina Bruno, executive director of the Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar. “That’s where the idea of parental involvement and parental responsibility in education comes in, because our children cannot and should not be in school seven days a week, 365 days a year.”

Bruno is part of a “Save Our Summers” alliance of parents, grandparents, educational professionals and some summer-time recreation providers fighting year-round school. Local chapters carry names such as Georgians Need Summers, Texans for a Traditional School Year and Save Alabama Summers.

Camps, hotel operators and other summer-specific industries raise red flags about the potential economic effect.

The debate has divided parents and educators.

School days shorter than work days and summer breaks that extend to as many as 12 weeks in some areas run up against increasing political pressure from working households – 30 percent of which are headed by women. These families must fill the gaps with afterschool programs, day care, babysitters and camps.

“Particularly where there are single parents or where both parents are working, they prefer to provide care for three weeks at a time rather than three months at a time,” Ballinger said.

The National Center on Time & Learning has estimated that about 1,000 districts have adopted longer school days or years.

Some places that have tried the year-round calendar, including Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and parts of California, have returned to the traditional approach. Strapped budgets and parental dissatisfaction were among reasons.

Credit: AP

School years are extended based on three basic models:

-stretching the traditional 180 days of school across the whole calendar year by lengthening spring and winter breaks and shortening the one in the summer.

-adding 20 to 30 actual days of instruction to the 180-day calendar.

-dividing students and staff into groups, typically four, and rotating three through at a time, with one on vacation, throughout the calendar year.

At the heart of the debate is nothing less than the ability of America’s workforce to compete globally.

The U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all tested subjects. But even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind peers in Asia and Europe.

Still, data are far from clear that more hours behind a desk can help.

A Center for Public Education review found that students in India and China – countries Duncan has pointed to as giving children more classroom time than the U.S. – don’t actually spend more time in school than American kids, when disparate data are converted to apples-to-apples comparisons.

The center, an initiative of the National School Boards Association, found 42 U.S. states require more than 800 instructional hours a year for their youngest students, and that’s more than India does.

Opponents of extended school point out that states such as Minnesota and Massachusetts steadily shine on standardized achievement tests while preserving their summer break with a post-Labor Day school start.

“It makes sense that more time is going to equate to more learning, but then you have to equate that to more professional development for teachers – will that get more bang for the buck?” said Patte Barth, the center’s director. “I look at it, and teachers and instruction are still the most important factor more so than time.”

Credit: AP IMAGES FOR SKYPE

The center’s study also found that some nations that outperform the U.S. academically, such as Finland, require less school.

Many schools are experimenting with the less controversial, less costly interim step of lengthening the school day instead of adding days to the school year.

Chicago’s public schools extended the school day from 5 hours and 45 minutes to 7 hours last year after a heated offensive by unionized teachers and some parents. Mayor Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Duncan’s boss, President Barack Obama, initially pushed an even longer school day – a major sticking point in this year’s seven-day teachers’ strike. He and other proponents argued that having the shortest school day among the nation’s 50 largest districts and one of the shortest school years had put Chicago’s children at a competitive disadvantage.

Wendy Katten, executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public Education, said opponents held back a push for a 7.5-hour school day, and got an extra staff person assigned to each school to handle the additional hour and 15 minutes of school time.

In San Diego, year-round school has been a reality since the 1970s.

District spokesman Jack Brandais said the concept was initially intended to relieve crowding, not improve performance test scores. The student body and staff were divided into four groups, with three attending school at any given time.

Through decades of fine-tuning, Brandais said the district now runs both traditional and year-round tracks simultaneously.

A 2007 study by Ohio State University sociologist Paul von Hippel found virtually no difference in the academic gains of students who followed a traditional nine-month school calendar and those educated the same number of days spread across the entire year.

Amid budget cuts and teacher layoffs, San Diego has cut five instructional days from both year-round and traditional schedules since last year.

What do you think? Will a longer school year help or hurt U.S. students? Take the poll:

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Comments (155)

crabbyoldman
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 7:01pm
Summer was made for kids……

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KenInIL
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:58pm
School days need to be longer. Not by adding classes but including breaks, study halls, 2 hr gym classes or a morning and afternoon gym class for younger kids. More exercise will allow more to get off drugs. Giving them study time during school to do homework which is collected later in the day would give the teachers a better feel for the child’s skill level. Many kids go home to empty houses and fend for themselves for 2 to 4 hours till parents show up. Usually it means eating junk food experimenting with controlled substances, meeting predators on the internet, or watching TV. It is not doing homework or playing outside.

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- ADNIL
  Posted on January 14, 2013 at 5:23am
  The best idea yet.
  
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mikenleeds
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:44pm
i homeschool all 4 of my children and this is why they all scored in the 13 hundred on the S.A.T. test .
kids already go to to much to government brainwashing schools , if they was being taught their A.B.S. S and 1.2.3. s instead of being brainwashed into be good little Communist they would be fine , America is number 17 th in the world thanks to the government schools and if you go back to 1955 we was number 1

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- cosmic dogma
  Posted on January 14, 2013 at 1:15am
  WE was?
  
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CathyvanDyke
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:43pm
A longer school public school year will definitely be beneficial in furthering the Marxist ideology of the present Administration through indoctrination.

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lthm
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:41pm
You like young skulls full of mush? Then by all means, keep kids in institutionalized government care as much as possible.

There they can learn about all the wonderful things like global warming, how to show you care by increasing taxes, that the constitution is meaningless, that we live in a democracy, that the government knows best about everything, how evolution is all there is, and how parents are killing all the cute endangered and totally harmless animals like wolves.

Math? Well, you did participate so you get an A.
Spelling? You tried. You get an A.
Science? Careful. There’s a test on this one. Do you believe in global warming? You get an A.
Computers? You successfully sexted. You get an A.
Sex Ed? You had sex using a school-provided condom. You get an A. (A+ if you had an abortion)
History? Why yes, white people are the root of all evil. You get an A.
Government? You told us we live in a democracy and freedom is illogical. You get an A.

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DisgustedinUSA
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:25pm
I worked in the Education system for almost 10 years. I can tell you this with certainty, it will be VERY hard to find teachers and school bus drivers that will be willing to give up a lot of their summer to take care of YOUR kids. You have to put AC in the school buses and also in the schools. Come August, when summer school rolls by, its brutal out and those buses get extremely hot, esp for the bus driver. I know, I used to drive bus as well, along with teaching. You get the heat emanating off of the engine, and so, the hotter out, the hotter the engine, the hotter the bus. I had days where I wondered if I would ever make it out of the bus alive. NOT FUN.

One more thought, Summers are when those that work with the kids, enjoy their own family time and vacations. Just because parents want someone ELSE to watch their kids, doesn’t mean the teachers and bus drivers want to. Trust me, we’re just as happy when school ENDS, as you parents are when it begins. YOUR kids aren’t all that!!!!

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tjnelson
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:25pm
I was one of those parents who was clueless. When my son graduated in 1999 from public high school, he educated me. He went on to get a degree in history, and found that it was even worse at our colleges. I think someone needs to take back our schools and educate our children on what they need to learn. It doesn’t need to be fun, it doesn’t need to be politically correct and IT NEEDS TO BE ACCURATE. Let the kids know that it’s ok to learn about slavery, about Nazi’s, about how horrible Woodrow Wilson was. Let them read Tom Sawyer and open a dialog with them. Take back our schools, and our country. Sending them longer isn’t the answer. Get rid of the teachers unions. Get rid of the agenda by the progressives to take over our children.

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pagraywolf
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:21pm
Here’s a reason that our children do so poorly that I didn’t see mentioned as I skimmed the responses – The high number of damaged children in the regular classrooms. Such as emotionally disturbed students who disrupt class, nearly mentally retarded students in classes with nearly gifted students, etc. How can you expect a teacher to educate all of these students at the level they need to succeed?! They aren’t miracle workers! And parents who don’t give a rat’s behind… There are so many problems/issues in today’s schools, it is frightening to think of our country’s future.

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Magyar
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:15pm
We all know there are several problems:

Unions
Left wing philosophy
Parents who can’t or won’t act like PARENTS

A longer school year won’t change JACK SH%T

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Ghandi was a Republican
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:12pm
This is a community decision best decided by the needs of the community. Equating normalcy with liberal engineered ghetto schools, feedings, baby sittings, broken homes etc, serves no purpose.
Notice how the Central planners always seem to go to their engineered lowest denominator and then cite ‘needs’ for all?
End the Dept of education and their bogus ploys.

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- circleDwagons
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 7:39pm
  Yes
  
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- Chet Hempstead
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 9:37pm
  That’s not how you spell Gandhi.
  
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TexOkie
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:08pm
Nothing good can come from our youth spending more time in the indoctrination centers.

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tolerence
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:03pm
the longer we keep our children out of the goverment schools and away from union liberial goonish public school officials the better off our children are…

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AmericanLass
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:01pm
Children need time to be children. Long grueling hours of sitting listening to boring indoctrination speeches can come later in Indoctrination Institutions to dumb them down.

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PIGSWILLNEVERFLY
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:50pm
“Somebody need to pay for my 15 kids. Somebody needs to be held accountable and they need to pay” Just stupid is as stupid does!

http://www.westernjournalism.com/somebody-need-to-pay-for-my-15-kids/

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justasurvivor
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:50pm
You will never find anyone willing to teach that long – UNLESS you get rid of the liberal school rules and actually let us discipline the students. Right now, with all the fuzzy liberal rules, students have absolutely no reason to stop misbehaving unless the parent makes it happen – and not enough parents stand for right.

Anyone can make more money with less stress than to teach under the mess the public schools are today. If we don’t have those extra summer weeks to recuperate from 10 solid months of abuse from certain students (and parents), you won’t be able to find enough teachers.

BTW – I asked my principal a few years ago why, since teachers are some of the most influential people in a child’s life, teachers aren’t drug tested, the principal answered that if they did, there would be no way to find enough teachers to fill a school.

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dusanmal
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:49pm
Problem is not just the time. US elementary and high school education lacks in demands, expectations and quality of teaching. Solve those AND add the time.
I teach Physics at the University level (and as legal immigrant I am product of a very different educational system). American students arrive at the University with the basic knowledge barely matching elementary school level of the system I went through and for no good reason. Worse, aside from the basic knowledge their abilities to do anything and their abilities to be self-critical are next to nil (cue-in liberal teaching philosophy for that – what is political leaning of the people without real life abilities and no self-criticism?).
There is a false picture painted by the liberal teaching establishment that creativity is all that matters and that children can’t learn much, that facts and abilities are burden on them “limiting free thinking”. That must be changed. Raise demands and expand curriculum, develop abilities, teach how to do various tasks. Measure teachers by the explicit results of their pupil’s work, pay accordingly. That would solve quality of teaching issue. Than think about expanding the school year which is indeed way too riddled with empty nothings here in the USA.

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kenneth45
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:47pm
I’ve got idea….Let’s try teaching reading, writing and arithmetic…..Let’s say the pledge of allegiance and a little prayer
and go out for a little P.E. and see what happens!

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- barber2
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 7:10pm
  KEN: And let’s take those students who disrupt the class OUT of the classroom ! Let’s see that hose who want to learn, have the opportunity to do so. ( everybody isn’t “ok.” Like those who disrupt the learning process ! )
  
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Youngamericangirl
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:44pm
Okay, so I usually just read the stories at the Blaze but I had to comment on this one. As a young teenager who is still in high school, making a longer school year is not the answer. Most students are stressed out enough with school work as it is.

At my school they are always giving us new tests to take. Last year the 11th graders were told by the school they were gonna be taking a brand new test at the very last minute, nobody had any time to study, and only six passed. I have to take the test this year and next year they plan to change things again. Every year, it seems they change the test taking rules and the tests we have to take, its hard for the students to keep track of. That’s the problem. The teachers have to spend too much time preparing us for all these tests that we barely have enough time to absorb the subject before they move on.

Yes, there are a lot of kids my age who are lazy and don’t want jobs but where I live, there are a lot of kids who need jobs, want jobs, and already have jobs. I am currently looking for a job myself, but I known some friends of mine who have jobs and have to juggle that, going to high school, and many do duel enrollment at the local college, so we already have enough to deal with. More school time will not help unless they give us more time to absorb what they are teaching before they give us the next test.

It’s quality not quantity that counts.

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- DougHuffman
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:56pm
  Jobs too.
  
  McJobs only tide one over from welfare to child care.
  
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- DougHuffman
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:58pm
  Tests are a teaching-learning tool no different from a textbook.
  
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- justasurvivor
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:02pm
  Amen. You are so right.
  
  I don’t teach history, but due to where I live, sometimes I bring up non-subject topics. It amazes me how much my students don’t know about everyday things. They tell me they spend all their time learning how to take tests.
  
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- Youngamericangirl
  Posted on January 13, 2013 at 6:36pm
  @Doughuffman
  
  I understand that, please don’t think I’m saying tests aren’t important because they are but when a school system gets to the point where the rules for test taking and the certain tests we have to take are changing every year, there is a problem.
  
  Here is how it goes in Algebra II:
  
  We spend one day on a lesson, take homework home, then the next time we have the class we do another lesson, take that homework home, and next time another lesson. That goes on and on until we get to the end of a chapter and we’ll have one class for chapter review and the next time we’ll have the chapter tests and then move onto another chapter and other subjects with the cycle repeating. Between those we’ll have mid-terms, final exams, etc. And last year we had many “evaluating tests” which basically serve no purpose other than to evaluate and most kids just Christmas-tree it anyway.
  
  I’m not saying test taking is not important, it is. I am a good student and I work my best but sometimes it just feels good to have a little break from all the stress of keeping up grades and worrying about what classes I have to take in order to graduate and how many credits I have to have in order to graduate. Do not people who have jobs get vacation time? Kids go to school from the age of 5 to 17-18 years old, do we not deserve a break every once in awhile too?
  
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JQCitizen
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:39pm
The public schools already mis-use much of the time they have our children in school. Why give them even more monopolization of their brains and time?

I personally home-schooled my children rather than waste so much of their time. In the time that they would have been warming a chair in school, my children held part-time jobs, learned musical instruments, and just played and worked along-side their parents. And when their father came home at night, they actually were not too burned out to want to talk.

How about that?

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jungle J
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:33pm
those raised by the dopers, the lazy the mentally unstable will continue to disrupt the normal. The current crop of teachers would do better selling dope to the blind.

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HPC172ERTAV
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:31pm
the “summer vacation” is a carry over from our agricultural roots, and is no longer needed. All the workers with kids want to take their vacation at the same time. Parents scramble to find some overpriced baby sitting service for their kids for the summer (8 weeks of it anyway). And yes I think what we get for our money in terms of education is very fuel pumpy (it sucks). But a general education in which there are common elements across the country is important for our national strength (right up there with a common language). We can save our schools but it will take a generation at least (don’t cry, it took more than 2 generations to screw it up). For profit schools in competition with one another will start to turn the tide. Also, the internet will allow delivery from talented teachers even from beyond the grave. Freeman lectures on economics are starting to show up on the internet. The methods of HOW to teach with online courses are still in their infancy. The waste of administrators insisting on building specific buildings to satisfy temporary demographic spikes when hundreds of thousands of sq feet of office and retail space sits vacant will slow as people begin to realize that issuing bonds to build schools does not make it free, anymore than balloon mortgages make buying a house cheaper.
The one thing that is certain in modern life is that change (often from the least expected quarters) is inevitable. The free market is unstoppable.

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bonesiii
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:31pm
When I was in school, the longer it went on continuously, the less interested I got, even trying to be (and succeeding at being ;)) a top student. Shorter = better, because then I’m more focused.

The key is that is GETS OLD after a while.

As for longer or shorter -breaks-, I’m not sure. The complaint that people forget things over longer breaks has always kinda fell on deaf ears to me, because that’s the whole point! We’re sick of the nonstop homework and tests and we need time to unwind. Then when we come back… REVIEW.

Not that complicated. Review is important to effective learning anyways.

So I say, longer breaks, less school days, and shortish school days. Just teach actual content in that time, rather than liberal/evolutionist/warmist pap, and they’ll be more engaged. :)

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alinskythis
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:25pm
Oh, yes, by all means let’s give the government even more time each year exposing the upcoming generations to mass brainwashing.

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TIMEBOMB
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:24pm
Parents settle down,I want to assure you that my regime will supplant your authority over your kids.When the transformation is complete I will give you the gift of communism and indoctrinating your kids into that ideology is my top priority. The state will be their parents and they’ll worship me your magnificent gay Marxist ruler.

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Lotus503
Posted on January 13, 2013 at 5:18pm
Two points:

1. If the educational basics (primary education) are being taught and emphasized by the schools instead of offering worthless subjects that have no real meaning in basic education, there is no reason that students shouldn’t spend LESS time in class.

2. Also, if school districts concentrated on hiring better qualified teachers instead of worrying about the number of teacher they have (see Obama’s debate where he said we need ‘more’ teachers), the students would learn more, much quicker. Teachers that emphasize their political and cultural view need to go.

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