More school: Obama would curtail summer vacation
http://www.ednews.org/articles/more-school-obama-would-curtail-summer-vacation.html
Earlier this week, President Obama announced that he was going to look into expanding the time kids spend in school. According to Education Secretary Arne Duncan, “Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today.” Right now, most public school students enjoy a nearly three month summer vacation. President Obama wants to change that for the benefit of the children’s education and to help the U.S. compete with other countries around the world. Even though U.S. students spend more hours per year in school (1146 hours per school year as compared to 903 hours in Singapore, 1050 hours in Taiwan, 1005 hours in Japan, and 1013 hours in Hong Kong), students in these other countries have more days in their school year (190-200 days as compared to 180 days in the U.S.). Traditionally, these Asian schools have had higher math and science test scores than the U.S. The President, along with others in the government and education, want to offer the same kind of education time to U.S. students as those in Asian countries get. Understandably, most U.S. children wouldn’t like this idea since it could mean less of a summer break or fewer hours in the day at home, but most would agree that more school time does help to improve grades since that means more time for teachers to help students in class or extra time for tutoring classes. Many private and charter schools have longer years or days and some public schools have shortened summer vacation and lengthened other breaks to have school year round. The only drawback this article points out is that it may cost and extra $1300 per student. However, many schools do receive federal and state financial aid to help out with the costs.
This article has many good examples showing why expanding school time would help set U.S. test scores on equal terms with those of other countries around the world. According to Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, poorer children in the U.S. are at a disadvantage at learning to wealthier children. The reason, he explains, is that wealthier kids’ parents put more effort into getting their children into summer camps, sports, music, and other extracurricular activities. Poorer children don’t always have these opportunities and during summer break, with no school, they tend to forget some of what they learned the previous year. Opening schools more days in the year or adding more hours to the school days will help these less fortunate children and should help U.S. test scores overall.
