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.