Pay to Stay

Paying for Longer School Days

So some parents came up with an ingenious idea, raise money to pay the staff at their local schools to keep the kids an extra hour. The effort has been made since the Obama administration has stated that longer school days are needed. This push from the article is occuring in Chicago at the Disney II magnet school. The idea is to lengthen the school day in comparison to other cities elementary hours. The magnet school runs just over 5 hours a day for K-5 while other cities average 6 hours or more a day of instruction. Now, I am a proponent of just about any significant change in education because over the past 10 years, there has been a sharp decline in the pursuit of knowledgeable, well-educated, and literate students/citizens. There has been a huge transition to the struggle to make "AYP" under the NCLB act. The days of worrying about what a kid will become when the graduate has ended and it has become more of a focus on what will they score on the end of the year test? Say what you want, but this is the truth. Already in my school, they are doing CRCT remediation for students who scored low last year. Great way to motivate students to do better, take them out of connections (specials, PE, CTAE, fine arts, etc.) and slam them with more Math and Lit once a week. They already have 90 minutes every day of Math and Lit each and only see Science, Soc Studies, and Connections every other day. If they can't get it with 180 min every day, 15 hours a week, they won't get it with extra help. I say we restructure the way we teach the curriculum, take the focus completely off a test and focus on what students should know by certain times, say pay attention to the standards more and you'll make it easier to pass the test. It stresses the kids out enough to be in school, at my school they pretty much shut down around 1 or 2 and they have to stay until 4. Everyone thinks more time in school will do students better, no it won't, not for everyone. Shorten the time in school by at least 2 hours, go from 8 to 2, condense lessons down to important things, restructure the day so students benefit more out of it. There are easier ways to teach these kids and we are not doing them. I love the fact I teach Tech Ed, I would absolutely go crazy if I were a math teacher and my administrator was down my neck every day making sure I am teaching what will be on the test. Let's give these kids something they can take with them for years to come and it will bode better for them on these AYP tests. If all we say is, "addition, subtraction, division, and algebra is all on the test, and you MUST know them" students will not care. However, show them they need it to be an engineer, accountant, McDonald's employee (lol, its still a job though), entreprenuer, financer, investor, and we bring meaning and understanding to our teaching and they score better. End of story.