Obama Makes a Push To Add Time To the School Year

N!NJA sends in a proposal that is sure to cause some discussion, especially among students and teachers. Obama and his education secretary say that American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage in comparison to other students around the globe. "'Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,' the president said 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.' 'Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today,' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. ... '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.' ... Kids in the US spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the US 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)."

Comments

Re:The real problem with education

[ZackSchil]

Public schools do not have a monopoly. Private schools (and their students!) are thriving. All you have to be is either rich or smart and lucky.

Re:higher test scores with a simple sacrafice-NCLB

[HaeMaker]

Yet, a Chinese dropout can get a manufacturing job, make enough money in ten years to retire in the lifestyle they are accustomed to and call it a life.

Leave a kid behind here and they are done.

We should just send them to China.

Re:Waste MORE time!?

[edumacator]

I'm pretty fucking sure that most parents know by the time their little brats are in middle (jr. highschool) school whether or not their child is college material, and should be adjusting their future goals accordingly instead of throwing on the blinders and being 110% supporting of their kids unrealistic goals.

Never underestimate the power of denial. As a teacher of ninth grade on level students and junior AP students, the expectations of parents don't change much. You would be shocked to see how many parents of students who can barely put a sentence together want their children to take AP Language. Also, as politicians continue to cede power to parents, we end up with a system where any student can take any AP class regardless of ability. Of course this hurts both the student with lower abilities and those with higher abilities as the level of the class falls.

This is a complicated issue coming out of a society that wants every child in Little League to have a first place trophy.