Longer School Days and Shorter Summers to Improve Standards

by Mike Smith · 2009-09-29 19:52:00 UTC
Topics:

If students aren't learning enough in school, perhaps just giving them more school-time is the way to improve things. Some may say more resources, smaller class sizes, or quite simply a better quality education is the best way to go, but longer longer school days and longer school years are likely to be one of the cornerstones of this administration's education reform policy. Arne Duncan supports longer school days with shorter summer breaks. He explains, "our school calendar's based on a 19th century agrarian economy. I'm sure there weren't too many kids in Philadelphia working in their parents' fields this summer."

Obama might be remembered as the President who stole summer, but the administration believes we need to better keep up with China and India, who offer kids more time in school. Here, quantity is beating quality.

[Photo credit: senor_codo]

Mike Smith is associate editor at Change.org.
PREVIOUS STORY:
Make-Believe Play Teaches Self-Control, Academic Success
NEXT STORY:
Student loans got you down? Start a petition.

COMMENTS (6)

    Comment Policy

    · All fields are required to comment.

    [X]

    Comments on Change.org are meant for further exploration and evaluation of the campaign on Change.org. To that end, we welcome constructive comments. However, we reserve the right to delete comments which, as determined solely in our discretion: (1) are offensive, abusive, or off-topic; (2) include content solely intended to personally attack the campaign creator, (3) are designed to subvert or hijack comment threads rather than contribute to them; and/or (4) violate our terms of service and/or privacy policy. Repeat offenders may be permanently removed from the site at our discretion. Please also be advised that: (A) we do not actively curate and/or monitor in any manner whatsoever the comments made on the Change.org platform, and (B) the creator of each campaign on Change.org may remove any comment at her/his/its discretion.