Quantity vs. Quality

Dave Arnold wrote in Longer School Days Affect Everyone:  Consider All Opinions Before Enacting A Law that there are six considerations to extending the ‘school day’.  https://www.nea.org/home/14511.htm

These are:

• The Cost
• No Child Left Behind
• More teaching and learning time
• Teachers less rushed
• 12-hour days for rural districts
• Parents

There is a cost to everything, even public education.  The question is this – is ignorance more or less expensive than education?  Let us examine cost for a moment.  Is there an inherent cost in:

• Absenteeism
• Student tardies
• Students missing school due to the need to support the family financially or socially, caring for younger siblings while both parents work
• Societies disinterest in local education
• Education being manipulated to meet a social, religious, special interest agenda
• Students from families with a lower SES level not receiving an education equal to those with a higher SES level
• Communities not acknowledging that the ‘initial’ cost of quality English Second Language programs for those Limited English Students in their community pays high dividends in the end
• Other concerns, ideas not referenced in the list

Is it really possible for a society that really cares to place a value on education?  The quote, “It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers.”  Author Unknown, says it all.

Yes, The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), has changed many things in the education of the United States as it was previously.  Let us get real … this is 2015, so it was fourteen years ago when the act was initiated and people are still trying not to implement the articles.  There are two choices:

• Get rid of the The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB)
• Implement every aspect

There is a saying, "____ or get off the pot", so do one of the two things and let us get along with educating our children by doing ‘whatever is necessary’ for success.

Yes, a longer school day would provide, in principal, “more teaching and learning time”.  Parkinson's law states that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”.  Since there is insufficient time now for ‘teachers’ to complete all projects will adding more time to the day change this or will life on the campus continue as it always has?

If we consider the previous response then it follows that ‘maybe’, just ‘maybe’ teacher will be “less rushed”.  Mr. Arnold references Japan but throughout the Asian continent schools are longer than they are in the USA.  Students perform because they are expected to perform.  Recently, in preparation for this article I asked my Chinese students who are in an English Advanced Placement program on the campus of a Chinese high school what they thought about the idea of United States students having a ‘longer school day’.  A point of clarification here – these students complete all the requirements for their Chinese subjects as well as Advanced Placement subjects and they are in class from seven in the morning until seven in the evening.  For them failure is not an option.  Their collective comment was, “No, they do not need a longer school day”.

What about those students in the larger districts that already travel an hour or longer to get to school in the morning and also in the afternoon?  Is it fair to them to subject them to ‘time lost’ while they ride the bus or travel by other transportation?  What will the extended ‘school hours’ do to these students?

Ah, parents … okay, enough ….

What is the actual bottom line?  Will the quantity of hours spent within the school building translate to an improvement in educational preparedness, or educational quality?  Research says …

Narrow the achievement gap.

While affluent families supplement their children’s educations with private classes, camps, and tutors, low-income students fall further and further behind.  “Adding to the school day allows schools to give them the same individualized attention, the same added homework help and tutoring and the same opportunities to develop their musical, arts, drama, athletic and other dimensions,” say the authors.  In the year after Massachusetts tested the Expanded Learning Time Initiative, which added about two hours to the school day, participating schools narrowed the achievement gap in English by 35% and science by almost 15%. 

Make life easier on working families.

School lets out at 2:30. Work doesn’t. While parents worry, many kids go home to empty houses or dangerous streets. Best case scenario? Too much tv. Worst case? You don’t want to know.

Improve student motivation.

No, your child probably won’t jump for joy at the thought of a longer school day, but having the time to study fun stuff as well as the core material necessary to pass standardized exams wins over many skeptics. Students in extended-day programs report that the quality of the teaching changes too; teachers have more time to answer questions, engage in dialogue, and get to know students. And having time for recess and extracurriculars doesn’t hurt, either.

Improve children’s health.

The days when kids spent the afternoon biking and playing catch are long gone, yet many schools don’t have time to offer gym class or even recess. With a longer school day, kids would have time to burn off some calories as well as the restless energy that often makes it hard to focus.

https://www.education.com/magazine/article/Kids_Need_More_Time_Learn/

“Young people today need exceptionally strong academic skills if they are to thrive in the 21st Century economy and society,” say Goldstein and Gabrieli.  Despite the difficulties inherent in making systemic change, Time to Learn makes a compelling argument that students don’t need new schools; they simply need a little more time. For more information, visit www.timeandlearning.org  

Education Secretary Arne Duncan, a chief proponent of the longer school year, says American students have fallen behind the world academically.  Whether educators have more time to enrich instruction or students have more time to learn how to play an instrument and write computer code, adding meaningful in-school hours is a critical investment that better prepares children to be successful in the 21st century," he said in December when five states announced they would add at least 300 hours to the academic calendar in some schools beginning this year.

Proponents argue that too much knowledge is lost while American kids wile away the summer months apart from their lessons. The National Summer Learning Association cites decades of research that shows students' test scores are higher in the same subjects at the beginning of the summer than at the end.

"The research is very clear about that," said Charles Ballinger, executive director emeritus of the National Association for Year-Round School in San Diego. "The only ones who don't lose are the upper 10 to 15 percent of the student body. Those tend to be gifted, college-bound, they're natural learners who will learn wherever they are."

Supporters also say a longer school year would give poor children more access to school-provided healthy meals.

School days shorter than work days and summer breaks that extend to as many as 12 weeks in some areas run up against increasing political pressure from working households – 30 percent of which are headed by women. These families must fill the gaps with afterschool programs, day care, babysitters and camps.

"Particularly where there are single parents or where both parents are working, they prefer to provide care for three weeks at a time rather than three months at a time," Ballinger said.

The National Center on Time & Learning has estimated that about 1,000 districts have adopted longer school days or years.

The concept of a ‘longer school day’ or a ‘longer school year’ has detractors as well …

Besides the outdoor opportunities for pent up youngsters, they say families already are beholden to the school calendar for three seasons out of four. Summer breaks, they say, are needed to provide an academic respite for students' overwrought minds, and to provide time with family and the flexibility to travel and study favorite subjects in more depth. They note that advocates of year-round school cannot point to any evidence that it brings appreciable academic benefits.

"I do believe that if children have not mastered a subject that, within a week, personally, I see a slide in my own child," said Tina Bruno, executive director of the Coalition for a Traditional School Calendar. "That's where the idea of parental involvement and parental responsibility in education comes in, because our children cannot and should not be in school seven days a week, 365 days a year."

Bruno is part of a "Save Our Summers" alliance of parents, grandparents, educational professionals and some summer-time recreation providers fighting year-round school. Local chapters carry names such as Georgians Need Summers, Texans for a Traditional School Year and Save Alabama Summers.

Camps, hotel operators and other summer-specific industries raise red flags about the potential economic effect.

Some places that have tried the year-round calendar, including Salt Lake City, Las Vegas and parts of California, have returned to the traditional approach. Strapped budgets and parental dissatisfaction were among reasons.

Opponents of extended school point out that states such as Minnesota and Massachusetts steadily shine on standardized achievement tests while preserving their summer break with a post-Labor Day school start.

"It makes sense that more time is going to equate to more learning, but then you have to equate that to more professional development for teachers – will that get more bang for the buck?" said Patte Barth, the center's director. "I look at it, and teachers and instruction are still the most important factor more so than time."

The center's study also found that some nations that outperform the U.S. academically, such as Finland, require less school.

A Center for Public Education review found that students in India and China – countries Duncan has pointed to as giving children more classroom time than the U.S. – don't actually spend more time in school than American kids, when disparate data are converted to apples-to-apples comparisons.

The center, an initiative of the National School Boards Association, found 42 U.S. states require more than 800 instructional hours a year for their youngest students, and that's more than India does.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/13/longer-school-year-will-i_n_2468329.html

It seems as if we need to look at the ‘quality of the educational program in the USA rather than the quantity.  Are curricular initiatives learning toward national standards as in the case of The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) the answer or are their other alternatives.  Many nations with high achievement in mathematics and the sciences have a nationalized curriculum; however, many of those at the lower end also have a nationalized curriculum.

It appears that the answer is in the quality of the product produced and the only way to present a ‘quality product’ is through the implementation of “Quality Assurance” programs.  What program is the best – International Baccalaureate, Advanced Placement, ‘A’ Levels, etc.?