So, Should School Days/Hours be Increased? My Opinion

Although I agree with President Obama's logic of students being the leaders of the future economy, and therefore they will have to compete with the rest of the world, I don't agree with him that having more school days like students in other countries would necessarily result in better student academic performance. Instead, I agree with Mr. Williams and Mr. Hess that longer school days doesn't necessarily mean better academic performances, but that it depends on the quality of the school day. A school day that consists of a quality schedule by the teachers is better than a longer school day where students and teachers aren't doing as much as they could. However, if the case were that every teacher were making the best use of their time but still found that the school schedule wasn't enough like Mr. Gabrieli stated, then I feel that those schools should consider increasing their hours. Also, although the chart shows that there was academic improvement due to more school time, it doesn't take into consideration the different qualities of the school's schedule. Therefore, as a student myself, I feel like school days don't need to be lengthened as we already have substantial amount of time to learn enough, with the addition of homework anyway, to perform well on standardized tests, it's just up to the student to put in that extra time on their own to improve their own personal skills as opposed to having the entire school day lengthened.

Should School Days Be Longer? Opinion 5

This chart shows that an increase in instructional school days does in fact improve average test scores. This is a main argument to why school days should in fact be increased, as more school time leads to students performing better on tests on average. Therefore, this chart supports the evidence that their in fact is a direct relationship between an increase in school time vs. an increase in education/ test scores.

Should School Days Be Longer? Opinion 4

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/04/27/expand-school-hours-and-you-will-expand-learning

According to Christopher Gabrieli, chairman of the National Center on Time and Learning and coauthor of the book Time to Learn, lengthening school days wouldn't only benefit students of all backgrounds, but it would also benefit their parents. He goes on to state that parents are more comfortable having their children have more teacher supervision throughout the day to improve their schoolwork while they're at work. He also argues that it's just not possible for teachers to fit everything they want to in the short amount of time they have and points out that evidence even shows that longer school days do in fact improve students' performances.

Should School Days Be Longer? Opinion 3

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2009/04/27/to-fix-education-school-hours-and-money-need-to-be-better-spent

Frederick M. Hess, the director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Tough Love for Schools, disagrees that more necessarily means better. In his opinion, lengthening school days would require a lot more money being spent on paying teachers and to schools in general, although it may not show much improvements in students' performances. He believes that more time isn't really the issue, but just how much quality is going into each school day is what really makes a difference, and that adding more time except with the same quality won't bring out much benefit. Therefore, he believes that if this is the case, students won't benefit from the "tedium" and that it will "disrupt fruitful activities for millions of youths who have rewarding lives after 3 o'clock."

Should School Days Be Longer? Opinion 2

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/09/26/should-the-school-day-be-longer/let-teachers-teach

Vern Williams, a middle school math teacher, believes that the topic of lengthening school days has certain benefits depending on what the extra time will be used for. He agrees that lengthening the school day would be worth it if the added time were to the core classes, but that it wouldn't be of any use if such time were added to help prepare students for state testing because it wouldn't be anything better than a "glorified recess or unstructured study hall." He also goes on to mention that the factors of if homework load as well as teaching duties will be lowered or not due to the extra time being spent at school.