It seems that Secretary Duncan thinks that our kids need to go to school longer days and a longer year. His rationale; our kids need to compete with those from India and China where they do spend more time and days in school. Sounds good, but it sounds more like the KIPP schools to me. It also sounds like some of what Bill Gates is proposing, a simple solution to a complex problem.
Spending more time in school doing the same things they are doing today will not necessarily better prepare them to compete with the best students from other countries. Test scores might increase because districts will have more time to focus and prepare students for the standardized tests used to measure success, but will this be better preparation for the competition they will face for jobs in the future? I don’t believe it will. I don’t argue that more time might have a positive influence on learning, but it must be accompanied with changes in what students learn and how they learn it. It would be cruel to subject students in some districts and classrooms to more of the same for longer hours. The end result would be increased boredom and dislike of learning.
Adding time will not bring passion to the learning process for students or for teachers and passion is what we must find to transform our profession. I believe that we are doing this work in our school system and that it should be embraced by those in Olympia and Washington D.C. as a model that can be replicated and that will support the changes necessary for young people to experience success in post high school learning and work. If only we had a way to share our story.
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