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To have an effect o n our public meeting next week, I would have
to have the actual names of the research that you mentioned.

The research would have to counter the effect that our
administration plans on having "summer school" divided up into the
quarter breaks. If a student fails a quarter, they will do
immediate remediation instead of waiting until the summer. The
plan is to have the majority of the kids who failed, up to speed
before the next quarter starts. At the elementary level, these
remediateion programs will be aimed at students with missing basic
skills.

The research would also have to address ESL students and the
whether shorter summer breaks helps the lose of English over the
summer break, since we have a very large number of ESL students
and this is a major concern at our school.

If any of your research falls into either of those categories
please, please send the names.

On 11/07/09, Agree with ACP here wrote:
>
> We have done some in-depth study of shedules and found NO
> substantive research that schedules improve learning. Schedules
> are cosmetic changes, not fundamental change.
>
>
> 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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