States and school districts nationwide are moving to lengthen the day
at struggling schools, spurred by grim test results suggesting that
more than 10,000 schools are likely to be declared failing under
federal law next year.....
But the movement, which has expanded the day in
some schools by as little as 30 minutes or as much as two hours, has
many critics: among administrators, who worry about the cost; among
teachers, whose unions say they work hard enough as it is, and have
sought more pay and renegotiation of contracts; and among parents, who
say their children spend enough time in school already.
Still others question the equity of moving toward a system where
students at low-performing, often urban, schools get more teaching than
students at other schools.
And of all the steps school districts
take to try to improve student achievement, lengthening the day is
generally the costliest — an extra $1,300 a student annually here in
Massachusetts — and difficult to sustain.
The idea of a longer
day was first promoted in charter schools — public schools that are
tax-supported but independently run. But the surge of interest has been
spurred largely by the federal No Child Left Behind law, which requires
annual testing of students, with increasingly dire consequences for
schools that fall short each year, including possible closing.
Pressed
by the demands of the law, school officials who support longer days say
that much of the regular day must concentrate on test preparation. With
extra hours, they say, they can devote more time to test readiness, if
needed, and teach subjects that have increasingly been dropped from the
curriculum, like history, art, drama.
“Whether it’s No Child
Left Behind or local standards, when you start realizing that we’re
really having a hard time raising kids to standards, you see you need
more time,” said Christopher Gabrieli of Massachusetts 2020, a
nonprofit education advocacy group that supports a longer school day.
“As people are starting to really sweat, they’ve increasingly started
to think really hard about ‘are we giving them enough time?’ ”
Still,
some educators question whether keeping children in school longer will
improve their performance. A recent report by the Education Sector, a
centrist nonprofit research group, found that unless the time students
are engaged in active learning — mastering academic subjects — is
increased, adding hours alone may not do much.....
Though the trend could accentuate the differences between poor and
middle-class students, with low-income students forced to spend longer
hours behind their desks, Ms. Chung noted that middle-class children
“basically have their own extended day that their parents have put
together for them.” The virtue of the extended day, educators say, is
that it forces children who might not otherwise attend voluntary
after-school programs to spend time on studies....
(However, some) parents also opposed the plan, concerned that
longer days would be too taxing for children, especially the younger
ones. Parents also feared their children would have to walk home in the
dark and said that a longer day would cut into family time.
Do you think the day should be lengthened at struggling schools? Do you think it will improve performance? Will it help children or simply help the school? Will it accentuate the differences between poor and middle-class students? Is this fair to children and teachers? Finally, would you support a plan that lengthened your child's school day?
