Imagine waking up in the morning and taking a horse and buggy to the office. Or doing your work with a quill and ink by candlelight. It's unimaginable. Yet every day we ask millions of children to make do in an education system designed for life in the 1800s.
That should be unimaginable, too.
There has been plenty of talk about school reform over the last 20 years. And there have been plenty of breakthrough experiments. But very little has taken hold across our schools, across America, that truly alters the game for our children.
The education gap remains vast and is growing. Our children are falling further behind children in other countries -- children they will compete with in this global economy.
Here's one idea that could change that: Expand and redesign the school day.
You may imagine the 8 to 3 school day, and the part-time school year, to be sacrosanct. After all, they worked in the 1950s, didn't they? But the world today is very different from 40 or 50 years ago. And the way we design learning time should be different, too.
Already 1,000 schools across the country are showing how more and better learning time boosts achievement. A growing body of research suggests that kids who spend more time in school score better on standardized tests, are more likely to graduate, and are more likely to land internships or apprenticeships.
Why? Well, with expanded learning time there is a greater focus on core subjects, but also areas that often get short-changed, like music, arts, athletics, tutoring, and programs that connect schools to their larger communities. Activities that keep students engaged and motivated.
For teachers, it means more time to plan and learn with other teachers. For parents, an extended day is a better match with busy work lives. And for children growing up in at-risk neighborhoods, a redesigned day keeps them off the streets and out of trouble.
We know there are great after-school programs in many places. They've helped show the power of keeping students engaged after the schools are shut. Embracing that movement, what we need to do now is throw away our 1800s playbook and design a learning day for our 21st century global economy. We need to give our children more time to learn.
We've joined a diverse mix of leaders who have signed on to the idea. This coalition, announced on May 10, is called Time to Succeed, and it takes this impressive grassroots movement and gives it a national voice. It includes such thoughtful figures as former Republican Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, Newark's Democratic Mayor Cory Booker, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, Stanford professor Linda Darling-Hammond, Geoff Canada of Harlem Children's Zone, Wendy Kopp of Teach for America, Peter Orzag of Citigroup, Eli Broad, mayors and superintendents in cities such as Chicago, New York, Boston, Houston and the District of Columbia, as well as community organizations like Citizen Schools and City Year, and many, many others.
If we want American kids to compete and thrive in today's world, then re-imagining the school day needs to be something we each take up as a cause -- in our own schools, in our own towns, and all across the country. In this election year we'll be hearing a lot of talk about the future of the country, but expanded learning time is something concrete we can each take action on.
We urge you to look into what it means and how it can work. Just visit the Time to Succeed website to see what you can do. For our kids, it's about time.
Luis Ubiñas is president of the Ford Foundation. Chris Gabrieli is Chair of the National Center on Time and Learning. They co-chair the Time to Succeed Coalition.
A little longer day that actually had real breaks in it and included time for creative arts and extended physical play might be worth considering, but I defy anyone of these self-proclaimed experts on school reform to teach anything academic to a roomful of 6-year-olds after 3 p.m. Even trying to teach a math lesson to 2nd graders after lunch takes twice as long and is far less effective than teaching it in the morning. Children, thank goodness, remain children, with energy ups and downs and a limited ability to function in a highly structured setting for long periods of time. Schools that could organize themselves around the physical and emotional needs of real children, rather than a curriculum list that is supposed to be forced into their heads on an adult timetable would find far greater success.
Chicago's parents have gone on the offensive saying they care much more about the QUALITY of the day, not the amount of time kids are in the building. Instead of discussions about time, let's guarantee that every child is granted access to the same types of educational experiences as the children of the ruling class. Whatever types of classrooms, resources, and experiences Obama's girls are getting at Sidwell Friends or Mayor Emanuel's children receive at the Chicago Lab school is what all children should receive. And those schools do just fine in the "8 to 3, part-time school year."
The secret to the success of VIVA Teachers in Chicago-- they went a step beyond the "we need more time" and thought deeply about what they wanted students to accomplish, what they as educators needed to do to give their students the best shot at reaching those goals and then figure out how to plan their time. They took an even bigger leap than agrarian to urban society (we did that 100 years ago anyway), they actually turned the entire approach to policy on its head--start with the outcome desired and engineer up to the approach. If this coalition's work, which VIVA is proud to support, puts goals first and then figures out how to use the time better for more students, we'll all be a lot better off. Here's to getting to the task.
That's your answer?
Why not require all students to go to school 9 to 5, every work day except Federal holidays, just like they'll do when they enter the work force?
The school day?
You do know the school day is structured around the bus schedules and the cafeteria schedules. It has nothing to do with what is best for students or optimum for learning.
Actually, the expanded school day and school year result in very little gains and they don't last.
Oh, and do you really think and extended day will allow teachers more time for collaboration and planning? You're joking, right? No, teachers will be required to teach every minute of that extended day. Because we MUST get our money's worth out of them so they must be actively teaching every min.
The arts? Nope. That costs money too. Those band instruments and art supplies.
Just think how much higher the test scores will be if they have two hours of math and two hours of reading each day!
Oh, and BTW, you couldn't afford it as you'd have to pay the teachers a higher salary for the extended day and extended year. You didn't think you were going to get that for free, did you?
Start at the core with funding. We can no longer afford to fund our schools they way they did over a century ago.
Then there are grade levels based on age. Really? We know so much more about individual learning. Enough to know you cannot group children by age for every subject they are to learn, nor force them to learn at a rate or time limit defined as grade levels. So restructure that next.
Now, knowing what we do about individuals, why are we insisting that every student that graduates from high school be college bound? Not all high school students want to go to college. They can't afford it, have no desire for it, or recognize they would not be successful. Some have already chosen a path that neither requires nor benefits from college. For these students, the college bound track is a set-back to their professions. So why don't we have multi-tracks in high school to train for their future careers?
The answer to all of this is that individualized instruction costs money. So...see #1. Funding.
Asking the current smaller group to work 4 hours more per day is just going to increase attrition and lower educator quality.
You see how corporate think happens, right. Now we have fewer teachers so lets figure out an excuse to increase their workload that we think the lemmings will buy and enforce for us.
To paraphrase the simpsons:
"Won't somebody please think of the children."
"Ok lady, look lets vote quick to eliminate all the children."
It's been my experience that people learn more and are more productive when they limit the amount of work they do each day. Extending the school day is a sure way to create a generation of burnt out drones that are incapable of thinking independently.
It's not the quantity of education that needs to be increased. It is the QUALITY of the education that needs to be increased.