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photo: CHINAFOTOPRESS/GETTY IMAGES (STUDENTS IN CHINA) OVERVIEW: Mr. Finn, a former federal education official, argues that longer school days and school years would improve the state of education in the U.S. He cites the better performance of students in Asian countries and in special charter-school programs that require more instructional time. He acknowledges that such a change would face resistance from parents, teachers, taxpayers and certain industries.
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Stay in School
By CHESTER E. FINN JR. In the face of budget shortfalls, school districts in many parts of the U.S. are moving toward four-day weeks. This is despite evidence that longer school weeks and years can improve academic performance. Schoolchildren in China attend school 41 days a year more than most young Americans—and receive 30% more hours of instruction. Schools in Singapore operate 40 weeks a year. Saturday classes are the norm in South Korea and other Asian countries—and Japanese authorities are having second thoughts about their 1998 decision to cease Saturday-morning instruction. This additional time spent learning is one big reason that youngsters from many Asian nations routinely outscore their American counterparts on international tests of science and math.
Some U.S. schools have figured this out. Those that boast extraordinary success with poor and minority youngsters typically surround them with learning from dawn to dusk. The celebrated Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP, a network of over 80 charter schools around the country, subjects its middle-schoolers to 60% more instructional time than the typical public school—including eight- to 10-hour days, Saturday morning classes and shorter summer breaks. “Summer learning loss” is no joke. When they return to school in late August or early September, many children, especially the least-advantaged, have shed a sizable portion of what they had learned the previous year—a full month’s worth, by most estimates, adding up to 1.3 school years by the end of high school. By age 18, the typical American will have spent just 9% of his or her hours on this planet under the school roof (and that assumes full-day kindergarten and perfect attendance). As for the rest of that time, the Kaiser Family Foundation recently reported that American youngsters now devote an astounding 7.5 hours per day to “using entertainment media” (including TV, Internet, cellphones and videogames). That translates to about 53 hours a week—vs. 30 hours in school. PASSING OUT VALENTINES Where things start to get complicated is that time spent in school does not equal time fruitfully applied to learning basic skills and core content. Measured by simple clock hours or days per year in school, we look good alongside Europe and decent in comparison with most of Asia. Our deeper problem is the enormous amount of time that typical American schools spend on gym, recess, lunch, assembly, changing classes, homeroom, lining up to go to the art room, looking at movies, writing down homework assignments, quieting the classroom, celebrating holidays, and other pursuits. It’s not all wasted time, but neither are these minutes spent in ways that boost test scores, enhance college readiness or deepen pupils’ understanding of literature, geography or algebra. Visit a KIPP school or another high-performance institution and you find that a big reason for the longer day is that it accommodates these nonacademic pursuits without sacrificing the instructional core. They tolerate remarkably little wasted time, particularly in the classroom setting. Their teachers squander minimal class time on discipline challenges or distributing and collecting materials. They deliver lessons that are carefully planned and structured—and youngsters who need additional help to understand something get it later, sometimes in the evening via the teacher’s cellphone, so that the entire class doesn’t need to pause for an explanation. TOUGH TO CHANGE Longer school days and years also aid working parents; for many of them, 2:30 p.m. dismissal times and three-month summer breaks are more of a burden than a benefit. And the more time kids spend in safe schools, the less time they have to go astray at home or in the neighborhood. Critics of extending the day and year occasionally note, with some justification, that U.S. schools don’t need more total time so much as they need to make better use of the time they’ve got. Yet American public education is so hard to change in fundamental ways that reform typically comes by adding something on top of what we already have. It’s actually easier to add an hour to the school day or a few weeks to the year than to alter the established routines of schools and school systems. As with everything else in public education, however, the threat of change brings interest groups out of the woodwork. Although many parents—particularly poor and working-class parents—welcome the prospect of schools tending to a larger portion of their kids’ lives, others are so enamored of their summer cottages, travel plans, grandparent visits, after-school piano lessons and soccer leagues that they resist any big shifts in calendar or schedule. Communities that have experimented with “year-round” schooling have often had to backtrack under pressure from the summer-vacation industry, including camps needing counselors, resorts needing waiters, pools needing lifeguards—and all of them needing clients with “traditional” vacation schedules. This issue brings out the teacher unions as well, demanding more pay for extra hours at a time when districts are hurting for money. Little wonder that taxpayers are legitimately wary. IS TECHNOLOGY THE ANSWER? Over the long run, technology holds much potential to boost student learning time in flexible ways and at modest cost. Well-designed distance-learning programs (and suitable hardware) enable greater individualization of learning, with each child moving at his or her own pace. This already happens in the best online schools, of which the U.S. already has several dozen, such as the Florida Virtual School and Ohio Virtual Academy. With continuing advances in hardware and software, the boundaries among “learning in school,” “learning in other settings” and “learning on your own” will gradually disappear, with potent implications for time spent learning, which need no longer be confined to the classroom hours stipulated in the district employees’ contract or the 180-day year prescribed in state law. But we must not be naive. The education establishment will vigorously defend those traditional boundaries. Just as important, although most youngsters are self-motivated when it comes to “entertainment media,” far fewer will take the initiative to learn more geometry or rules of grammar on their own. While glitzy technology will make such things more tempting for more kids, and well-organized (and prosperous) parents can help make that happen, millions of girls and boys are likely to continue doing most of their academic learning in places called school, during “school hours” and under a teacher’s supervision. Which brings us back to high-performance schools, those that control far more than 9% of their students’ lives and use the extra time to accomplish three things: more hours to teach important skills and knowledge; fewer hours outside school to waste or get into trouble; and instilling in students the college aspirations, appreciation of learning, good behavior and orderly habits that are too often missing from homes and neighborhoods. Disadvantaged youngsters in particular need the benefits of longer days, summer classes and Saturday mornings in school. But nearly every young American needs to learn more than most are learning today, both for the sake of their own prospects and in behalf of the nation’s competitiveness. Do you think students should spend more hours and days in school? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
