On 11/04/09, ACP wrote:
> Here is an article that talks about the history of our
> school year.
>
> http://www.slate.com/id/2170230/
>
> There is no question in my mind that a longer school year is
> certainly being considered by many as the panacea of what
> ails public education. I am not so sure and am quite
> skeptical about all of the unscientific research and
> assertions that are being made as if they are facts. It
> happens all of the time. We see it with mainstreaming,
> differentiated instruction, grade inflation, homework, etc.
> So far, none of these programs have created sustainable and
> far reaching improvement in educational performance. What
> does work is smaller classrooms, deeper teaching, less focus
> on tests, more hands on and long-term projects, holding
> students accountable for behavior and performance. But
> unfortunately, these fixes take money and there isn't. So
> we will continue to search for superficial fixes to the 25:1
> or 30:1 classrooms that don't work.
>
> It seems intuitive that longer school days and more of them
> should improve performance. Well definitely maybe! But
> there are a lot of variables involved and one must determine
> if changing one of them (distribution of school days
> throughout the year) will overcome all of the others. It is
> difficult to answer, especially when money is involved and
> different groups all have their own agendas. The homework
> myth is a great example. It is intuitive that more homework
> will help a child learn more in less time. Really? There
> has even been some research fabricated and twisted to try to
> prove this out. But when one really looks at all of this
> research, one finds that the conclusions being perpetrated
> upon us just aren't supported.
>
> If your assertion is true, we must ask, "Why did students of
> the past supposedly learned more and did better when they
> too had summers off?" The response is first, "Are we sure
> they did?" If we find this to be true, we must then ask,
> "What changed to make today's students perform worse under
> the same conditions?"
>
> There are numerous variables in play here. We all seem to
> agree that the state of public education is dismal and that
> students are not leaving public education with the basic
> skills and knowledge they need. OK, if we accept this, we
> must ask ourselves why and what can we do about it. My
> theory is simple: Children today are not growing up with the
> cognitive development stimulation they were in the past.
> They no longer have parents reading to them. They no longer
> help dad work on the car, mow the lawn, farm the farm, build
> things. They no longer cook with mom, do the laundry with
> mom, sew with mom, feed the chickens and milk the cows with
> mom. These activities are what helped students early on
> develop "common sense" and cognitive skills about how the
> world works and how things fit together. This lack of
> fundamental skills is what creates difficulty for students
> when we attempt to link concrete skills to abstract
> concepts. These connections are simply lacking along with
> the moral values, self respect, and work ethics.
>
> So your assertion is that if we lengthen the school day or
> school year or parse it up differently, that we will
> overcome all of these issues and our students will learn. I
> happen to disagree. Unless the extra time in school is spent
> overcoming the gaps in moral values and cognitive skills,
> nothing will change. And invariably, nothing changes in the
> way we instruct our kids. We rely on the same old
> philosophies that if we spend more time in math class,
> students will learn more math. If we spend more time in
> reading class, students will read better. If we spend more
> time cramming 30 kids into a classroom with a single teacher
> doing the same old things, that our students will develop
> better moral values. In my opinion, this is as ridiculous
> as saying if we double the amount of mandatory professional
> development time for teachers, they will automatically
> become better teachers. Not true!
>
> We can debate AYP, NCLB, and standardized tests all day
> long. And you are right about one thing - if we don't make
> AYP (Which I predict most schools will not) something will
> happen. We can count on that. But the changes will not
> result in something better and will not do anything to
> improve the condition of our children. They will simply be
> changes based on pseudo-research that gives the perception
> of doing something. All schools are tasked with assuring
> 100% of students are passing minimum standards by 2014 (I
> believe). It ain't going to happen! And I am not talking
> about just the poor inner city schools. Even the so called
> "finest" schools in our district are struggling around the
> 90% mark. So we will see what will happen. You can bet
> something will. And it probably will not be good.

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