In his recent interview with Matt Lauer of the NBC Today show, President Obama brought focus to his idea that a longer school year could have significant effects on the success our kids are showing in school. Faced with continual backsliding from schools across the nation despite funding and the Race to the Top initiative, the president is of the mind that a shorter summer break, similar to ones followed by others countries around the globe, could help kids readjust to the new school year more quickly, lessening the time spent by teachers in re-teaching the previous year’s skills before building on them.
There are a few ways to look at this. The reality is that many kids do come back pretty stale after the average 2 months and a week break between the end of one school year and the beginning of another. Many parents will argue that the kids need the time to “be a kid”, for families to take vacations and build the memories that the summer break has often offered. While the summer is a precious time for our kids, the long term effects of all that free time can make it difficult for a lot of kids to get back into the school groove.
Another argument lays with the teachers and the president who see the difficulty in that readjustment and how much time is spent re-teaching lessons that already took time to learn. There’s also the fact that we never really know how many of the previous year’s lessons are not retrieved with the speed they are reintroduced, leaving gaps in any given students education with potentially negative long term effects.
The hardest hit kids are those that don’t have any kids of childcare during the summer, the low income families where no adults are available to the kids during the summer months. The benefits of a longer school year are most prevalent to these children. Offering them the potential for adult guidance and learning in place of idle, unmanaged time.
By lengthening the school year, we reduce the lost time relearning the previous year’s lesson and increase the potential for our lower income youth, who make up most of the lower averages in every level of education. The President has a good perspective on this path, we need to work to make it a reality.
Posted By: Paul Adams
Tuesday, October 12th 2010 at 9:50PM
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