Slashdot Mirror
More Schools Go To 4-Day Week To Cut Costs
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."
I'll bet anyone a pound of donuts the teachers union will begin clamoring for *more* money since the teachers are being forced to work a longer workday - even though they'll be getting an extra day off. "Oh, no! We're not getting an extra day off. We plan and create curriculum and go to in-service sessions and...and...and...)
I'm filing this as AC since I don't want the NEA firebombing my house.
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.
This may or may not work out for schools but I would love a 3-day weekend every week at my job!
I'm sure they will love the kids being home an extra day when they are not around. With childcare costs, this could cost them far more than $50,000 total
Create endless headache for parents that must now have someone watch their child one day a week.... I suspect someone is not going to get reelected to the school board.
It doesn't matter how they tweak the system, to try and save money, or even to try and improve the educational experience for these American students. The end result will be the same. These American students still won't be at a level equivalent to their European and Asian peers of the same age.
They won't understand math and science nearly as well. Hell, many of these American students probably won't even understand English as well as Asian or European students of the same age!
Sometimes, we just need to admit that it's a lost cause. It's a situation that can't be salvaged.
probably cheaper than teaching them stuff and gives them something to do as well. then just put them on welfare and let educated immigrants do our work to pay for welfare.
sounds like a plan.
Let's give it some thought. Four days school weeks. Let's M/T, and Th/F. Now, if we extend each day by 1.5 to 2 hours, we net a savings in janitorial, heating and cooling, buses (this is huge), bus drivers, and if done nationally, a LOT of fuel from days off for parents driving kids to school. More time in each class means my kids may not complain about the limited amount actually spent LEARNING. There will be an extra day for homework (let's say Wednesday is an off day), so that there is less wear on kids. Also, on the off day, the kids could have access to email, or web/other learning tools for immersion.
I call BS on this. They're only interested in giving themselves a long weekend.
There's no consideration given to the parents who have to scramble to find another
day-care facility (yes, I am saying that schools, now-a-days, are functionally day-care
facilities).
In some states (I don't know about N. Dakota), there's a minimum requirement for
attendance by a number of days served - which is taken to be calendar days; not
accumulated hours... Just my 2.
Think about it, this can be a solution to unemployment.
Before you start asking me "But what happened to the usual near-Marxist flavor of your posts? Do you not see that this will lead to more desperate workers that will have to yield more and more to the demands of MegaCorp?", seriously, think about it. We already have robots doing labor, let's focus on building new, more efficient ones, so we can afford to have one more weekend day in the long run. And in the short-term, new people can be hired to work part-time- it's not like MegaCorp can't afford it!
The three laws of thermodynamics:(1) You can't win. (2) You can't break even. (3) You can't even quit.
Seriously, 4 day weeks with 10h days would rock over 5 day weeks with 8h.
I mean really, since everyone is working the SAME shifts right now, you lose 2h to traffic/travel times on a day anyways!
How can a school system not afford to stay open? In new york city they get $17,000 per year per student. Average tuition at a private school is $4,000. Enjoy your socialism
we've had that in france for a while. it has been discovered that pupils end up extremely tired at the end of each day, and the whole thing is totally inefficient. in fact, we're having talks of going to a US style week, with morning classes and afternoon outdoor activities and stuff... also, switching to a 4 days week to save money is the most ludicrous and stupid thing I've heard. ah, no, I've heard worse. closing a school in a mountain village, and forcing parents to drive their kids 1 hour away every morning and back
Negatives:
Parents will scramble to find daycare!
Kids will run rampant in the neighbourhoods/suburbs!
Public will see this as teachers lessening their workload and/or have long weekends!
Public will see this as cost downloading!
Moderates will see this as America losing the battle to improve education (compared to China)!
Teachers will complain that they have to fit the curriculum in 4 days!
Positives:
Teeanagers will increase population growth!
Atheltic programs will have an extra day for practice!
Parents will raise more independent children as they are well equipped to leave them unsupervised for one day per week!
Daycare will BOOM!
Cartoons will run all day on Fridays!
Americans kids are too good for College; let's have the Chinese and Indians to all dem thinking jobs for us!
If they are able to keep extra programs and such? Plus the dollar amounts are all relative to the schools involved. 50K would be a rounding error in NYC schools but in Podunk wherever results in a class being taught for fuel for school buses.
We have counties here whose fuel bills are in the millions, going to four day weeks would save money wasted on buses; let alone what parents and students who drive spend; and allow them to be spent more effectively.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
We'll give them a day off school and instead use that day for tutoring.
Isn't that like teaching?
No, it's tutoring, not teaching!
Where does the money for that come from?
The money we saved closing the school for one day a week will pay for all the tutors...!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Isn't it funny how the leaders of a fallen nation always claim they didn't see it coming? How they keep claiming to the very last day, that theirs is a strong nation that will never fall?
You know what? They don't even lie.
Moving to a 4 day school week completely ignores the fact that (like it or not) school is a type of day-care that working parents rely on. While it may save the school 50k a year per school (really.. is that all?) it is going to cause problems for the working parents and their employers.
... what you can't accomplish when you are unwilling to pay for anything.
Although with the rather solid conservative majority in South Dakota, many of these people are probably the same ones who complain about public schools being a machine of the commie-socialist-atheist-muslim-fascist-hippie-liberal elite.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
So are all of the local companies in those districts going to four day work weeks? A lot of parents are at work during school hours and have to take vacation days to cover school holidays that don't overlap with their work ones. I wonder how the parents are handling an extra day each week. Day care facilities must be booming!
I wish we had this when I was in school. Would have been one more day out of the week I could have spent reading something at my level instead of having to sneak it in during class.
Cut taxes!
Clearly it's the fault of some evil government type person somewhere, casting evil spells.
Great, more time for the little brats to run around vandalizing the town. Except for the parents that take time off to watch them. In that case they'll be screaming for more "family" time off from work. They'll get it, and those of us without kids will end up carrying even MORE of their load. I'm already beyond tired of carrying extra load for people that can't figure out how to keep their pants on...
I do wonder why more effort doesn't seem to be put into using Technology to help save money.
Sure, take your 4 day week. Does that mean the kids can't be given a website to go to, with their on personal login, that has a bunch of weekly tests and exams for them to do, that they can spend friday doing? Have set times, make them sit the "exam" at the same time as everyone else, effectively making it a "school day" without the school. Even if it's something simple like watching an educational video and occasionally interrupting to ask both education questions and questions to make sure they're actually paying attention. It's not a perfect idea, it sure as hell wouldn't beat having direct access to a teacher 5 days a week, but surely it's better than just not being in school on the friday.
It seems that technology in the classroom is constantly shunned, with people stating that computers distract kids more than they help, but maybe that's just because people haven't invested enough in them. Or maybe it's just a pipe dream.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
I loved four-day weeks at college. For a trivially longer workday you get four days extra per month to have a life.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So what are parents doing for their kids while they're at work on Friday? Now they have to pay for sitters?
More free time is the best gift to give to those kids who use their free time productively. Sure, a lot of kids will waste away their awesome 3 day weekends playing video games and getting into trouble. Whatever. Their loss. There are also a lot of kids that deserve that free time - those that use that time to conduct bedroom science experiments, learn a musical instrument, play sports, etc... more time to do all of this can only make them a better person. In any case... if kids aren't learning anything from our 'defunct' education system, how can it be harmful to lessen their exposure to that system? Its a win-win scenario.
I'm all for this! The more time kids spend out of school the more actual learning they can do.
And how does this work for parents who both work, do they have to then pay out for someone to watch their kids on this day off the kids now get every week? I thought you paid taxes for your kids to be in education, so surely the state should give you some sort of rebate (about a 20%) on the amount of you tax that goes towards education funding (which from the story is a dwindling amount anyway).
Wont someone think of the parents?
So what are parents who have a 5 day workweek going to do? Hire a babysitter on friday? This may work out for older kids, not the younger ones....
Why has no-one mentioned the issue of daycare for these kids on Fridays? Saving the school a measly $50,000 per year is one thing, but it's gonna cost the parents a lot more than that between them. What are they paying taxes for, exactly?
i thought the purpose of education was to condition a neanderthal hunter to sit down and be still for 40 hours a week.
The affluent will be able to pay for private school. What these cuts do is to ensure that the poor get less education. Somehow, most of the affluent folks have become convinced that educating the poor is not worth it. It is hard to see how this will end well.
Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.
While the rest of the world is increasing the school week, the US is decreasing it.
Not only are these people working to make you poor and miserable while you are old, but trying to slash medicare and "taxing" your 401K with their debt ceiling/S&P/default stunt, they are working to make your children under-educated, to make sure they are poor all their lives.
Please vote these people out in 2012.
For your self interest.
Great to see the US has its priorities straight. Spend money on war and other nonsense but don't spend it on your kids and society. What a joke.
One less cruise missile could keep 100 schools open all week for a whole year.
They could have done this easily in my high school without loss of education: schooldays were from 9h30 till 16h30 with wednesdays from 9h30 till 12h
Each schoolday was divided into 8 classes of 50min with 2 breaks of 10min after 2 classes and a lunch hour from noon till 1
They could have easily squeezed those 4 classes of wednesday onto the other days by for instance shortening the lunch hour by 20min and extending the schoolday with half an hour or starting it half an hour earlier.
$50,00 for an entire district, that is ridiculous and small potatoes does not even do it justice.
That has to be like 25 cents per student (and no matter how small the district is it would still just be pocket change per student).
And just think of the cost of some kind of child care for all of these kids during this one extra day off that they parents will not have, or alternatively the extra cost to the tax payers for all the extra damaged property that these unattended children will cause.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Because you can't keeping people fat, stupid and glued to Fox news without stripping of the educational system first.
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With the kids coming out of the schools today, they should be keeping them in school LONGER, not less. The best thing they could do would be MANDATORY uniforms, and DISCIPLINE.
It's just one less brick in the wall.
Gently reply
Here's a better statistic. The internet says there are 199,616 kids in South Dakota.
So, if everyone chips in 25 cents per kid, they can go to school for that extra day.
Are you kidding me? This is a serious "cut"?
This reminds me more about Bill Maher's plate of food, they're talking about cutting the parsley (education), while ignoring the mashed potato (military spending), and macaroni (social security).
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I find I do better when we have 4 day weeks. This happens fairly frequently during the winter months, since skiing to school really isn't a viable option for many students. Our workload doesn't really get any smaller, since we just get our assignments from the internet, but it still results in more time that I can manage in a personally useful way, rather than have it managed for me by a computer program that brute forces a schedule with no conflicts. However, the amount of work we have is also huge relative to public schools.
I could definitely see myself slacking off (rather than taking breaks) if I didn't constantly have something to work on.
Couldn't they fire one secretary instead? Or maybe-- I'm a "fascist", I know-- reduce every teacher's salary a small amount?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
50 measly thousand dollars? how about you pay about 10 bucks more in taxes and get a better school?
800K in population. say 1/4 are tax payers. For 10 dollars per year that's 2 million. SO now you got your 5 days back AND you can get rid of home work and add another period design to focus kids on there specific problem area.
but ... no. Evil social programs are BAD. Fuckety fuck FUCK!
Here is one, how about a 25 cent tax on Soda for education? or gas? Spread the tax around into any area, not just property taxes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In Europe we had 5-day school week. Every two weeks we'd switch from morning classes to afternoon classes, and vice versa. Grades 1,3,5,7 ware for example morning class, and 2,4,6, 8 ware afternoon. Every two weeks they switch. Morning classes ware from 7am-12 and afternoon 12-6pm.
This allowed for smaller buildings, less maintenance, heating/cooling, smaller class sizes, less teachers!
We also had way less homework than I've had here in US. But we did more in class. Tests and quizzes ware daily occurrence - we ware continuously tested. So, even though I finished grade 7 in Europe, when I came here to US, I was put into grade 9 (youngest in my high school) due to my developed skill-set. I had easily taken maths all the way into grade 11 without any effort at all.
There are definitely more efficient ways of teaching kids. Issues I see are: curriculum, lack of inventive teaching, teacher's unions, giving kids too much slack and dumbing them down, also learning though play has to stop as well as giving everyone A+ for participation type of bullshit. But who am I to judge?
Can we PLEASE start school at 9am. Prior to that, it messes with teenager circadian rhythm, which is not good for retaining information. I see schools starting earlier and earlier. One school a bit away from here is starting school at 6:45.
I have a theory that they're stuffing extra hours into the morning instead of into the afternoon because of sports. Sports tend to be seen as more important and have a higher priority. You can't end school later, it would mess with sports!
I want to see schools start at 9/9:30am and end at 5/6pm.
But schools don't care about their students and if they're actually learning. They care about test scores, and they want to raise them as cheaply as possible. This means "teaching" to the test, and by teaching I mean having the students memorize instead of comprehend.
It's no wonder we're falling behind. I wince every time I hear of cuts to education budgets. It's a short term solution to a long term problem. Increase education and maybe in the future we won't be in this predicament.
Idiots.
as a parent the main thing we worry about the kids are not at school is who is going to look after them, granny/granddad, pay for babysitter, or take time off work, unpaid time off work or use up vacation time.
If parents are force to take every Friday off, this is likely to cost jobs.
not to mention the teachers, unless they are getting paid for 5 days in which case that opens another debate.
If teenagers had some maturity and discipline, which they don't, they could make good use of the time by doing homework and sleeping. Instead, most will spend the time screwing around and getting into trouble. I would have just hacked on my computer all day, which would also have avoided sleep and homework. Teenagers have the same sleep requirements as pre-teens, but the rhythm is shifted. One school tried shifting their start and end time later, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. As it is, most highschool schedules are stupid, and students could use the extra day to make up for the lost sleep. Sadly, most won't avail themselves of that. Teenagers think they have an energy surplus, but it's mostly that they are more easily bored and distracted. Of course, they'd be less distractable if we fed them a proper diet instead of McDonalds all the time. Another school in the southeast US tried feeding their students healthy lunches, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. Whoda thunk it.
...to "think of the children"?
Are there any good reasons to have a 7-day week anyway? I'm asking from pure ignorance because there may be, specially after everything in our lives that got adapted to that. But if we ignore everything we built on top of it, is there a good reason to choose that system over any other?
I'm asking because I always felt this is something that should be rethought. Is it really beneficial for human beings, to work 5 consecutive days and have 2 days off (in most cases). Is there any research on that?
I partially agree with this move, not because of budgets, but because I feel that working 5 consecutive days decreases your productivity as opposed to, let's say, working 3 days in a row and having 1 day off. A 4-day week system that wouldn't decrease productivity in the long run since you increase the working days and decrease the consecutive working days. Maybe a better system would be a 2/1 ratio on working vs weekend days. Who knows? All I'm saying is that this should be rethought and studies should be made.
I know I went on a tangent here, feel free to mod me down for being off-topic, this is just something I feel should be talked about but for other reasons than what these schools presented.
I'm so glad that other states are doing this kind of experiment on their children. Future generations will thank them for the empirical evidence.
What I can't figure out is how they got this past the IRB.
4 day weeks work well for *some* jobs, but not well for pre-college students. I shudder to think of what high school kids with a whole day off will get into.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Now parents will have to arrange day care for little kids who will be home on Fridays.
No way that's going to work. No day care provider is prepared to take kids only one day a week, much less non-toddlers, age 5 to 12.
The school board really hasn't thought this one through, unless the $50,000 figure is actually some sort of blackmail: "Parents pay up. Or come Friday, little Johnny will be hanging out on street corners".
Around the world, illiterate adults can be taught to read, write, do arithmetic in 90 hours in a classroom. Not a high level of literacy, but enough that they can continue their education entirely on their own using books (pre-internet studies). If the students spend full-time on their studies, they can go to college in 2 to 3 years.
The current education system is the result of mis-understanding results of industrial revolution teaching. When mass education started, they had to take children that were too young to work, and didn't know how long they would have them. So, teach what they could to age 7, more the next year, etc.
This has been converted to the idea that children must go through those levels, that children's minds gradually build the ability to read at a college level. In fact, if you do nothing for the first 15 years, they will cover all of the material in the next 2 years. Easy.
Further, given the internet, it doesn't take teachers for kids to learn. Google for 'unschooling', 'hole in the wall experiment', 'Summerhill'.
The major problem with our current education system is the mono-culture of mental sets it produces. The idea that there is a particular body of knowledge which 'educated' people know is part of that general understanding.
.....somehow I think the community would be better served ditching the employee rather than negatively impacting thousands of kid's education.
The USA spend 1757 Billion $ on bailouts in the years 2008 and 2009 for banks, insurance groups and the auto industry. But of course they keep on saying that the well-fare state is too big and we all live beyond our means. We all need to cut costs to save the banks, because we know that without the banks and Wall Street there would be no civilization.
http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
It depends on why homeschooling is taken. If it's because the parents don't like the kids learning about things that the parents don't believe exists (e.g. evolution), then you get dumber adults from homeschooling.
If the parents are highly intelligent, their children will do better. If the parents are dumb, they'll do worse.
It looks more like homeschooling exacerbates the differences of the parents.
I'm pretty sure he said less hours, not lesser hours.
from wikipedia: "The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the "pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results". It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice "between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less" as a stylistic choice"
I think you may be overestimating the capabilities of the "at worst" home schooling parent. For a school to match a very bad parent would require every teacher to be just as bad, and even then, at least the teachers had training and degrees in education.
...cause they've reduced the chance to miss school by 20%. Hey, here's a thought! If we go down to one day a week of school, they won't be able to miss more than one day a week of school! Attendance will skyrocket!
In fact, of course, they are mandating missing school. They should factor the extra day at home into their attendance as a day being missed by every student every week.
--
$tar -xvf
> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children
Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?
Or, I dunno, maybe we can ditch the income taxes so families have the option again of the mother staying home with the children, and we can stop incessantly building an Empire?
Nah, let's cut school days instead.
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OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Just how can working parents control their employer? Who will be there to watch over these kids on that extra day off? How will school systems be able to keep employees from leaving. For example cafeteria workers, custodians and bus drivers won't take smaller weekly checks without a fight.
This may work better in small rural schools but in the cities it would be a huge problem. The better colleges surely look into the high schools sending them applicants and kids from the lesser school systems are surely already held back in applying to most colleges. If anything we need more class room hours for our kids. Human knowledge quickly doubles and the educations needed for success need to be more extensive every year.
We all knew the stupid gringos were dumb as bricks, but now they actually went and officialized it.
Great, now all the aspiring hooligans will have an additional day to go and gangbang old ladies...
My high school teacher wife added up the days they wasted on standardized testing, pre-testing, re-pre-testing, coaching for the testing, blah-blah-bla and it was *ONE FOURTH* of the steenking school year. Fact, not making it up.
Flushing the standardized testing would allow us to cut the school budget, and taxes presumablly, by 25%. I would buy that for a dollar.
(Or, we could spend more on the football team, this is Texas :)
What about all the parents now that have to get a babysitter for them time during that extra 1 day a week, where they can not rely on school being the baby sitter, but need to be home to supervise the child...some parents (single moms) work for the time the kid is at school..doing this is really not going to solve anything, instead try and save money by forcing all paper to be cut down, and all school supplies to be cut down, ebooks instead of paperback, all tests can be done on computer terminals, where schools become really paperless..there will be a lot more savings when you consider how much paper a school goes through.
The leanings of the political right (I'm pointing barbs at the GOP and TEA party here) are doing an excellent job turning the US into a 3rd world country. 1) Greed by wealthy Americans and very large corporations has led to a political establishment that has them paying about 20% of the taxes they should. The lie "don't tax the job creators" is profane! Every other G7 country has higher tax rates than the US, *AND CREATED MORE JOBS THAN IN THE US*. 2) Compared to other countries, the education system in the US is rightly described as 'dysfunctional'. The cost of keeping someone in prison for 1 year is more than the cost to send a child to school for 12 years, but in the 'rule-by-corporation' parties, fire teachers, hire guards, and go from there. Perhaps after the next US civil war (coming to a state near you), board rooms won't be more important than home rooms.
They should have went with Wednesday off. 3 days in row off means that kids won't do much for these 3 days. If they had 2 days school, one day off to do homework, then another two days of school, they wouldn't be so disconnected.
but I suppose teachers like 3 days off too - so it is win/win for everybody but students.
That is really gonna cut into bullying time!
I teach World Geography at a NICE school and even I have HUGE classes. 38 in my largest and 33 in my smallest. We don't even have textbooks for them all and like I said... I'm at a nice school..
Soon, churches (mainly of the Southern, pentecostal sect) will begin offering to either underwrite public schools or help out in the class rooms as unpaid volunteers... in exchange for being allowed to proselytize in every class room as they desire and have a direct hand in the curriculum.
This fits hand in glove with the implementation of public vouchers for religious schools. Hell, just cut out the middle man and take over public schools intentionally underfunded by the GOP statehouses! Killing critical thinking and indoctrinating the next generation of the right-wing in one fell-swoop! Little Madrassa on the Plains!
there should be no problem in paying more money for educating your populace. After all, it should be easy cutting some unneeded expenses. After all, you are obviously much more skilled than the people who actually run things like a school, so you can obviously eliminate a whole lot of waste in your own life and show them just how it's done.
that less hours in school leads to more hours at home where the anti-intellectual culture comes from.
I'm sure that the current round of republican bagger candidates will be happy to create work groups where children can occupy their time learning work skills producing cheap merchandise and performing maid duties for the wealthier class of Real Americans.
schooling isn't design to transfer knowledge from adults to children; it's design to create conforming and obedient citizens.
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I don't know about other countries, but in Finland all teachers graduate from university. In addition, there are comparatively very few immigrants in Finnish schools, so it is a lot easier to teach and to learn than in many other countries. Both children and teachers have like 10 weeks of summer vacation and a couple of weeks off during the school season.
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Cut the school day to save money....cut the art/music classes to save money ...how far do we go? Public school has become a disgrace. I'm all for public schools, I went clear through them. But I'm ready to see more private schools around that will offer tighter administration, teachers with authority to manage their classes, and a focus on teaching kids as much as possible.
Plus, pay the teachers well to do an important job! There is no shortage of teachers in the world! Snatch up the good ones and let the kids benefit. Give them the ability to manage their classes without fear of lawsuits and hiding behind the teacher's union.
I see too many politics, disgraceful decisions, and lack of focus on educating children. I say this after seeing my wife teaching in public school for several years. She loved her job, but quite frankly, it became too overwhelming and emotional for the pay. And I would say the kids lost great educational oppurtunities because of it.
make full time 30-32 hours a week and re work benefits around that. Also split healthcare form being tied to the job.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland is well worth a read. Politicians running education systems often want to find out how the likes of Finland do so well, but they ask the questions (going on fact-finding missions etc) and then don't like the answers they get back.
Here in the UK the drive in schools for years now has been towards pitiless onslaughts of standardised national testing at all levels, and league tables and measurement everywhere you look. It is the exact opposite of letting children learn and grow in idiosyncratic ways without pressure for them to 'acquire key skills' and essentially tick the boxes the government wants ticking. This is all driven by the business imperative to turn education into training for jobs rather than anything about nurturing well-rounded, inquisitive, open-minded, moral human beings, and is combined with some ill-informed tabloid crap about how kids these days don't respect their elders, blah blah blah.
Politicians see that the country's schools are some way down the league tables, look across the water to Finland, refuse to believe what they hear about no high-pressure exams until the end of school, teachers being respected instead of turned into drones, and so they go ahead and implement the exact opposite.
Poor judgement by school boards and just look at the consequences. A parent will now have to stay home from work as one cannot leave a child at home unattended. So, the state will pay a bigger price. I am sure they never thought past the budget to consider the kids. Why not close air conditioning an hour or two early, and start it an hour or two later. I am feeling very sad and sorry for the students and their difficult future.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
My children are educated in top private schools, and will treat their servants, your children, very humanely, as long as they know their place. A four-day school week is plenty of time to learn how to shine shoes, mow lawns, and heroically charge the enemy lines. A nation of religious morons and safety-serving cowards deserves no better.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Why does anyone still have their children in a government school?
Our local district moved to a 4 day week last year. The biggest issue I've had with it is that the reasons for going in this direction were all about budget savings, teachers preferring the 4 day work week (who wouldn't), etc. No where in the discussion was it ever discussed whether it would help more kids go to college or succeed in life. Even when it was brought up, the administrators or teachers changed the subject to how much they'd like the day off. One thing I've noticed is that the only schools doing this are rural schools. The local school district is the major employer in the district, thus making the teachers and administrators a large percentage of the voting population. Because local school boards are an elected position, this voting block carries a lot of sway with the local board members. They give the reason of budget savings, but my observation is that it's more about an extra day off than about actually improving the schools. Fortunately, it hasn't been the a disaster, but it does seem like our priorities and reasons for moving in one direction or another are messed up.
Nah, you don't need to go to school to become a beggar. Unless you have well connected parents and than millions of morons will hail for you - say like for Bill Gates. When will they realise the american dream is not for everybody?