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More Schools Go To 4-Day Week To Cut Costs

Posted by Soulskill on from the education-has-a-poor-compression-ratio dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "As schools return to session in South Dakota, more than one-fourth of students in the state will only be in class from Monday through Thursday as budget constraints lead school districts to hack off a day from the school week. Larry Johnke, superintendant of the Irene-Wakonda school district, says the change will save his schools more than $50,000 per year. In order to make up for the missing day, schools will add 30 minutes to each of the other four days and shorten the daily lunch break. 'In this financial crisis, we wanted to maintain our core content and vocational program, so we were forced to do this,' says Johnke. Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance, but many of the 120 districts that have the shortened schedule nationwide say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. Others say that not only did they fail to save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers."

7 of 614 comments (clear)

  1. Wow... by vikisonline · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To save $50,000 a year, they make an already bad education system worse. The future implications of that are..... I mean that much money for an entire school in one year is not that much. It's like having one less teacher. I'd for one prefer larger classes over this.

    1. Re:Wow... by dam.capsule.org · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Big finance people are already taking all the money, now they are also (indirectly) cutting down on education. Poor and uneducated people, rich and knowledgeable lords, well come back 500 years ago.

      --
      What sig ?
    2. Re:Wow... by dreamt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not only that, but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children who would otherwise be in school. We know some parents like to treat schools as babysitters, but in any case, now they will really need one. Guess they maybe shouldn't have complained about a slight tax increase to pay for their kids education.

    3. Re:Wow... by Nadaka · · Score: 3, Insightful

      They tried that with me. I had a chronic medical condition and was officially disabled and unable to attend school regularly. So even though I did all the homework and aced every test, I got failed in a clear violation with the law regarding disabled students. When I was 16, they told me that even if I had perfect attendance from then out, I would not graduate high school until I was 21. I was also not allowed to take a GED until I turned 18. We were not able to sue to allow me to graduate because they threatened to arrest everyone for truancy and child neglect.

      Your idea is fucking retarded.

    4. Re:Wow... by nbauman · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The U.S. should be looking to how other countries with better educated children fare - here are the rankings from 2010 - how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work? Why are the kids there ranking better than kids in the rest of the world? How do their weekly work timetables compare? What about those long holidays?

      Good questions. The first thing that visitors notice in those schools is that teachers are highly respected.

      The Republicans right now are demonizing teachers, with calls for the end of unions, calls for pay cuts, high-stakes testing where they blame teachers for the results and fire the lower 10% (like Jack Welch at GE), vouchers, charter schools and privatization.

      Finland has strong unions, so unions aren't the problem. There's strong evidence (NAEP scores) that charter schools are slightly worse overall than public schools. There's no country in the world with a successful universal privatized education system. Michelle Rhee, the conservative school reform darling, got caught cheating. High stakes testing leads to widespread cheating.

  2. Re:In the end, it doesn't matter. by Bigby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a lot of truth to what you are saying. Our education woes have nothing to do with time. It has to do with the culture. When will it become "cool" to ace a math test? When will the science fair be bigger than a football game? It looks like Glee made Glee Club more popular...now come out with some similar show to help in the core subjects...

  3. Re:I can see it now... by hattig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What about the parents who used to be able to rely on their kids being in school so they could go out to work? Do they now need to arrange childcare for Fridays too?

    This is just transferring a small cost to the system into a massive cost for society - unless you're in the childcare industry.