The \u201cmore is always better\u201d approach to instructional time is a \u00a0popular and destructive fetish among educational policy makers (and one that goes hand-in-hand with standardized testing, about which I have previously written on this site<\/a>.) \u00a0First, right off the bat, can we debunk the myth that the rest of the world educates its children better because it spends much more time in the classroom?\u00a0 Proponents of extended school days and longer school years love to point to other countries with more rigorous time requirements.\u00a0 Do Japanese students go to school for more hours than their American counterparts?\u00a0 Indeed they do.<\/p>\n

But proponents of a more sane school calendar have their own international exemplars to point to.\u00a0 Finland, for example, consistently scores near the top of the international PISA exams but students there only attend school between twenty and thirty hours a week (depending on the students\u2019 age), have very little homework, and do not have a longer school year (they also take almost no standardized tests). The point is, all such comparisons between American students and their foreign counterparts are inherently tricky\u2014you can cherry pick results enough to support almost any idea for school reform, and often, the testing populations are different enough that such comparisons aren\u2019t valid to start with.<\/p>\n

Tried, but not true<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yet, just as politicians and bureacrats have embraced the maxim of \u201cmore tests=better schools\u201d (after all, if you weigh the cow more often, she\u2019ll get bigger, right?) so too have they embraced the notion that American students have far too much free time and should be spending more time in school each day and more days in school each year.\u00a0 In fact, in a political landscape polarized like never before, this is one idea that has true bi-partisan enthusiasm.\u00a0 Currently, Mayor Rahm Emmanuel is in the process of introducing extended school days in Chicago\u2019s public schools.\u00a0 But he might do well to look at what happened when the same type of \u201creform\u201d was implemented in Miami\u2019s schools, which spent $100 million to add an hour onto the school day and 10 extra days onto the school calendar.\u00a0 Studies concluded that there were no significant benefits in student learning.<\/p>\n

But why not?\u00a0 Why doesn\u2019t more time equal more learning?\u00a0 The answer is so simple that it might easily be overlooked:\u00a0 the quality of the instruction is far more important than the quantity.\u00a0 If students actually spent their time in school involved in interactive lessons that introduced and reinforced academic concepts in interesting, creative ways, then student learning would increase.\u00a0 Simply toiling away another hour on a mind-numbing worksheet will not magically raise student achievement.\u00a0 But it may well make them hate school.<\/p>\n

What should we do about summer?<\/strong><\/p>\n

After all, another question to ask regarding whether or not to increase the hours students spend in school is: at what cost?\u00a0 I\u2019m not talking about dollars and cents here, but about the importance of children having time free to spend with their families and just be kids.\u00a0 I\u2019m not the only one asking this question. \u201cSave Our Summers\u201d organizations have sprouted up in many states, with the mission to \u201cpreserve the summer months for outside-the-classroom childhood and family learning experiences.\u201d\u00a0 Not all education should happen inside the walls of a traditional classroom, and summer vacation allows students, with their parents, to explore individual interests in-depth.\u00a0\u00a0 Time off also allows students to (gasp) relax and make their own fun.<\/p>\n

Of course, the reality is that many parents don\u2019t have the time to shuttle their kids to a drama workshop or science camp in the summer.\u00a0 They\u2019re too busy working two part-time jobs to take them on a hike in the woods or to go see a free jazz concert in the park.\u00a0 And many of these parents live in neighborhoods that are unsafe\u2014sending their children out to ride their bikes and wander the streets is not an option.\u00a0 For this very reason, many parents support the idea of keeping their kids in school for longer and more days.\u00a0 At least they\u2019re safe and \u201cdoing something.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is a real dilemma for parents, but the answer is not to force kids back to the classroom for more and more instructional time.\u00a0 It\u2019s to offer free, thoughtful, and optional<\/em> enrichment opportunities for these students that get children active, out into their community, and exploring things in a way they wouldn\u2019t be able to during the regular school year.\u00a0 Such summer enrichment opportunities would require money, energy, and creativity to develop, and they wouldn\u2019t easily be measured by a tidy little standardized test at the end.<\/p>\n

No easy answers<\/strong><\/p>\n

And therein lies the problem.\u00a0 The appeal of \u201cmore days in school, more hours in the school day\u201d is that it\u2019s easy to understand and can be implemented in a straightforward way.\u00a0 It\u2019s a great applause line in a political speech about what\u2019s wrong with education today.\u00a0 But a great applause line is not sound educational policy, and American students shouldn\u2019t have to give up part of their childhood because politicians are unwilling to engage in the difficult work of real education reform.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[Editor’s note: This post is\u00a0 the second in City Mom’s three-part series on education. Other topics in the series are: “Evaluating teachers based on students’ scores is harmful,”<\/a> and “What reasonable school reform would look like.” <\/a>]<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The \u201cmore is always better\u201d approach to instructional time is a \u00a0popular and destructive fetish among educational policy makers (and one that goes hand-in-hand<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":446,"featured_media":12095,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57,54],"yoast_head":"\n