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Longer school day for all to help disadvantaged kids do better?

Long school day to close achievement gap?

  • Yes, every child should spend more time in school!

    Votes: 9 33.3%
  • Only the children who need it should spend more time in school.

    Votes: 8 29.6%
  • No one should spend more time in school

    Votes: 4 14.8%
  • I can't stand Obama, he makes me sick with his grandiosity

    Votes: 2 7.4%
  • I believe in unschooling. Schools are brainwashing institutions

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • If Obama thinks it's a good idea it probably is

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • other

    Votes: 4 14.8%

  • Total voters
    27

MyOwnDrum

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What do you think? Obama was talking about expanding the school year. The reason, apparently, is to help the poor and minority kids and close the gap.

So, should everyone have to go longer, or just those at risk?


Will a longer school day help close the achievement gap? | csmonitor.com

Charter schools like Alain Locke and KIPP schools (a network of some 80 schools that are often lauded for their success with at-risk students) have made big gains in closing gaps in student achievement, partly through expanded schedules. Other schools have been making strides, too – notably in Massachusetts and in the New Orleans system.

"If you want to look at schools where [the achievement gap is narrowing], they're saying they couldn't do it without the added time," says Jennifer Davis of the National Center on Time & Learning in Boston. "Even when you get good teachers into schools, you need added time."

According to studies, low-income students lose more than two months of reading skills over the summer. One conclusion from the studies: More than half the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income students can be accounted for by the differential in summer learning opportunities.

"It's over the summer months that disadvantaged kids fall behind," says Karl Alexander, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "If you have parents who themselves didn't succeed in school and aren't highly literate, kids aren't going to get those skills at home."
 
No offense. But if you go into an American school today, they're all pretty disadvantaged.

The Informatics Review : Comprehension and reading level

About one in every four Americans (25%) is a high school dropout

About half (45%) have gone to college for some period of time, but fewer than one in six (15%) have a college degree

edu9.gif


If this doesn't reaffirm "stereotypes" I don't know what will. What we need is a system like Japan's.
 
What is it about Japan's system that's better in your mind?

Increasing schooling hours without sufficient funds and with a continual removal of arts ad emphasis being placed on science and tech., creativity declines. A society without creativity cannot innovate, which is why Japan is facing a crisis within the next decade.

Keeping kids in school for more hours under the current militant system of receiving instruction and carrying out orders is not going to help our society in the long run. This assembly line for the middle class will not solve the future's problems.
 
It's over the summer months that disadvantaged kids fall behind,
This says a lot.

It shouldn't be up to teachers and taxpayers to make up for piss-poor parenting. Many kids could get by and perhaps benefit from shorter school days and/or no homework. God, don't get me started on homework.
 
The problem is not with the school day it's how uninterested the children are to the school day.

Whenever I was in K-12 (like three years ago), there would be entire days where children and teachers alike would be so uninterested with the material. There's no opportunity (at least in the NC school system) for a teacher to be creative, or interesting with the mundane material.

Public school crushes creativity before it can form in the student.

"Year round schools" do better in N.C. (but the best year round doesn't do nearly as well as the best public school system in NC), on average, because parents who want their children to go to year round schools are going to take responsibility in their child's education.
 
Year-round school and longer school days are both good plans. But we really do need to cut down-- way down-- on the amount of homework that's being assigned. It's counterproductive.
 
I think there should be a longer school year for sure, cut into summer break a lot. But also, there has to be a fundamental shift in policies and funding of public education to have an effect. There's no reason why many inner city schools should be underfunded when suburbia public schools are well over funded. There's plenty of problems with the overall public school system and if we want to keep it, I think it needs a drastic overhaul.
 
Why send kids to school for more hours when they're not learning anything right now? We need a major overhaul of the educational system in the U.S., not just throwing more money at an incompetent system and sticking kids in their seats for more hours. That's not going to solve anything.
 
Stupid kids should get to go to summer school.

If they're really stupid, they should be held back to repeat a year.

Guess what? That's how things were when schools worked.

Wanna know what really has to be done?

Of course you do.

What really has to be done is to raise standards of achievement back to their former higher levels, and start using that four letter f-word on report cards.

"Your son f f f f FAILED second grade and will have to repeat the year. More effort on your part might have avoided this, but it's your kid, do what you want".

And if a kid criminally violent or unrepentantly disruptive in class, kick his sorry ass out of school before they impede the learning of the students in the class.

Elementary and high school teachers should have the same authority my physics TA had in college. First day in class there were two girls in the back, talking and laughing away...preventing the students in the class from concentrating on the lecture. So he said, "if you don't want to shut up, get out".

The law requires the kids to be in class you say?

Fine, collect all the trouble makers and put them in a class of their own where they can't interefere with the serious purpose of the school.
 
Stupid kids should get to go to summer school.

If they're really stupid, they should be held back to repeat a year.

Guess what? That's how things were when schools worked.

Wanna know what really has to be done?

Of course you do.

What really has to be done is to raise standards of achievement back to their former higher levels, and start using that four letter f-word on report cards.

"Your son f f f f FAILED second grade and will have to repeat the year. More effort on your part might have avoided this, but it's your kid, do what you want".

And if a kid criminally violent or unrepentantly disruptive in class, kick his sorry ass out of school before they impede the learning of the students in the class.

Elementary and high school teachers should have the same authority my physics TA had in college. First day in class there were two girls in the back, talking and laughing away...preventing the students in the class from concentrating on the lecture. So he said, "if you don't want to shut up, get out".

The law requires the kids to be in class you say?

Fine, collect all the trouble makers and put them in a class of their own where they can't interefere with the serious purpose of the school.

Getting rid of the teachers unions would also go a long way towards improving our school system..... as it stands now, once hired, teachers can't be fired without a long and expensive process no matter how incompetent they are.
 
If mom and dad are at work then the kids should be in school.
 
Year-round school and longer school days are both good plans. But we really do need to cut down-- way down-- on the amount of homework that's being assigned. It's counterproductive.

You can't ignore the fact that children are just not interested in the curriculum.

For our education process to be successful we need to do much more than just change the day length, or school year.
 
Year-round school and longer school days are both good plans. But we really do need to cut down-- way down-- on the amount of homework that's being assigned. It's counterproductive.
Total and utter BULL****. What we need are qualified teachers and a real curriculum that's worth a ****. We don't need longer hours. We need to teach our children information that's worth learning. Homeschoolers prove this every day by using less hours to get more done.
 
You can't ignore the fact that children are just not interested in the curriculum.

Can't change it, either. It's something we have to work around, because the curriculum is the material we've determined they need to learn. Best we can do is make it as interesting as possible and then use best teaching practices so that they absorb as much as possible despite the lack of interest.

For our education process to be successful we need to do much more than just change the day length, or school year.

Needing to do much more to fix the process does not mean that this is not still a necessary step.

We don't need longer hours. We need to teach our children information that's worth learning. Homeschoolers prove this every day by using less hours to get more done.

Homeschooling works because the parents are totally invested in their child's education. The entire reason the welfare schools exist in the first place is that not every parent is either willing or capable of making that investment, and our society has determined that every child should be given at least some opportunity to get an education. My frustration with the school system is that our society apparently does not consider this to be a priority and is not willing to invest sufficient resources to give every student a good opportunity.

And homeschooling parents are capable of using everyday life to provide teachable moments in a way that professional teachers can never dream of. Claiming that they use "less hours" is misleading; they can easily spend far more time in actual instruction than a professional teacher whose efforts must be divided between administrative and clerical duties in addition to instruction.
 
I'm in favor of both, but given my choice I would prefer that we extend the school year.
 
Can't change it, either. It's something we have to work around, because the curriculum is the material we've determined they need to learn. Best we can do is make it as interesting as possible and then use best teaching practices so that they absorb as much as possible despite the lack of interest.

I think you'd have to change society's expectations about education, and attitude toward children, and toward familial and civic duty; in response, the next generation of children would have a different attitude toward school, as do children in, say, Japan, who have longer school hours, more school days, and more school years, a drop-out rate of less than 1%, and far, far higher academic performance.
Education doesn't exist in a vacuum; it's a product and a reflection of society.
Here in the US, for better or for worse, we are raising very autonomous children; we value individuality, autonomy and self-esteem in our children. We are not, as a general rule, cultivating compliance, obedience, modesty, and conformity in our children.
This causes issues with our educational system.

As long as the US is what it is, there will continue to be issues with our educational system, and we will continue to turn out inferior scholars, as compared to the rest of the industrialized world.
Since we all claim to love the US and everything it stands for, perhaps we should just accept that and move on.
 
I would support a longer school day for everyone if (and this is a big if) there was some benefit to it for the average and above-average kids as well. If you're just sticking people in the same classes for longer, I'm against it. But if it's done right, if the kids who need extra help get it, and the kids who don't have extra opportunities that they wouldn't have had before, I'm all for it.
 
So, should everyone have to go longer, or just those at risk?
200 day school year for everyone, year round.
Why won't this happen?
Teachers unions will oppose the longer work year.
 
Total and utter BULL****. What we need are qualified teachers and a real curriculum that's worth a ****. We don't need longer hours. We need to teach our children information that's worth learning. Homeschoolers prove this every day by using less hours to get more done.

Only homeschoolers don't have 25-30 kids to teach in 1 hour. ;)
 
What is it about Japan's system that's better in your mind?

I think the militant way in which Japanese kids are taught that education is essential is what attracts me about Japan's education system. It's almost like a matter of honor to do well in school. But I doubt anything like this would happen in a country that values redneck politicians over those who've gone to university.

Increasing schooling hours without sufficient funds and with a continual removal of arts ad emphasis being placed on science and tech., creativity declines. A society without creativity cannot innovate, which is why Japan is facing a crisis within the next decade.

Cut sport plans, remove useless **** like 'home ec.' and music class etc.
 
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