Should the U.S. Lengthen Its School Year?

With the enthusiasm for the wind in August and returning to school, well-known problems emerged. Will it be like Dodo during summer vacation?

Some people think that the necessity of modern world economy needs it. They state that embarrassing inequality in school education affects the ability of the United States to keep pace with other countries. Elementary school students in the United States spent about 943 hours in class in 2011, but they are still ranked as the average of science and reading in the world mathematics and average reading level.

Others believe that longer academic years are fair for less fortunate students. During the summer vacation, American students lost an average month with guidance guidance, mainly mathematical skills, but poor students lost particularly intense blows and reading abilities. They can provide extra-curricular and learning opportunities with poor students to poor students, increasingly subjects overlooked at school, such as music and art, where their wealthy fellows can get during the summer I believe.

However, some people are skeptical. A top-down decision to extend the grade is not to solve the problem unique to each school district or learning community, but instead to solve the best solution for educators, students and guardians to collaborate to narrow the achievement gap You should find out.

The United States has appealed that our school is not ranked on a global scale. The only "solution" that staff can do is to extend the number of school days. If your teacher's quality is bad, how do you extend your grade? If the students can not score, no one knows whether the teacher is not good. I agree that this system has some flaws (I am a student myself, I should be aware), and some students have bad grades due to personal indignation Take out. How are these indignations formed? There should be some reason. Some children are shy to give bad teachers a lower grade. Still, there are still students who evaluate teachers sincerely. It will make it possible for the entire school to see what the school needs to change. I think that it is prudent for me to make a teacher evaluate by a child (perhaps 6th grade) because a bad teacher gets honest results from the student's "mature" result.

Most studies on extension of the grade focus on improving the task time, which is the time actually spent by students during learning, and extending the grade. "What is urgently needed is not to extend the grade but to use school time more effectively," said Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation's Educational Promotion Foundation. In a time study on the task, Richard Rose Miller said that in a typical year of 1,080 hours, he actually received 364 hours of academic guidance. In the same survey, it is calculated that only 38% of students spend time on academic research. Rose Miller suggested, "We should use our time more effectively before we begin to extend our grade" (Mozzarella, May 1984).

In Canada, extension of grade is not a stage of negotiation. In schools where there are few traditional timetables, the number of days in the academic year will not increase. We only redistribute the time on a relatively regular basis. For example, Roberta Bondar public school closed in the summer, but Christmas and March holidays are long, autumn and winter breaks have become long. Many educators also have resistance. Susan Lambert teacher union, the former president of the UK, told the newspaper in Vancouver Sun last year that two months from the classroom are essential for teachers. "I can tell you that teachers need their summer vacation, you teach five hours a day, then prepare, mark and evaluate."