(AP)--Did your kids moan
that winter break was way too short as you got them ready for the first
day back in school? They might get their wish of more holiday time off
under proposals catching on around the country to lengthen the school
year.
But there's a catch: a much shorter summer vacation.
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.
The
three-year pilot project will affect about 20,000 students in 40
schools in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee.
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.
Yet the movement has plenty of detractors - so many that Ballinger sometimes feels like the Grinch trying to steal Christmas.
"I
had a parent at one meeting say, `I want my child to lie on his back in
the grass watching the clouds in the sky during the day and the moon
and stars at night,'" Ballinger recalled. "I thought, `Oh, my. Most kids
do that for two, three, maybe four days, then say, `What's next?'"'
But opponents aren't simply dreamy romantics.
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.
The debate has divided parents and educators.
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.
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.
School years are extended based on three basic models:
-stretching
the traditional 180 days of school across the whole calendar year by
lengthening spring and winter breaks and shortening the one in the
summer.
-adding 20 to 30 actual days of instruction to the 180-day calendar.
-dividing
students and staff into groups, typically four, and rotating three
through at a time, with one on vacation, throughout the calendar year.
At the heart of the debate is nothing less than the ability of America's workforce to compete globally.
The
U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all tested subjects.
But even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations
have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind peers in
Asia and Europe.
Still, data are far from clear that more hours behind a desk can help.
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.
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.
Many
schools are experimenting with the less controversial, less costly
interim step of lengthening the school day instead of adding days to the
school year.
Chicago's public schools
extended the school day from 5 hours and 45 minutes to 7 hours last year
after a heated offensive by unionized teachers and some parents. Mayor
Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to Duncan's boss, President Barack
Obama, initially pushed an even longer school day - a major sticking
point in this year's seven-day teachers' strike. He and other proponents
argued that having the shortest school day among the nation's 50
largest districts and one of the shortest school years had put Chicago's
children at a competitive disadvantage.
Wendy
Katten, executive director of Raise Your Hand for Illinois Public
Education, said opponents held back a push for a 7.5-hour school day,
and got an extra staff person assigned to each school to handle the
additional hour and 15 minutes of school time.
In San Diego, year-round school has been a reality since the 1970s.
District
spokesman Jack Brandais said the concept was initially intended to
relieve crowding, not improve performance test scores. The student body
and staff were divided into four groups, with three attending school at
any given time.
Through decades of fine-tuning, Brandais said the district now runs both traditional and year-round tracks simultaneously.
A
2007 study by Ohio State University sociologist Paul von Hippel found
virtually no difference in the academic gains of students who followed a
traditional nine-month school calendar and those educated the same
number of days spread across the entire year.
Amid
budget cuts and teacher layoffs, San Diego has cut five instructional
days from both year-round and traditional schedules since last year.
Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
