Is a Longer School Day, Year Coming?
President Obama’s Secretary of Education wants a longer school day and year. Suggesting that our schools need to be more competitive, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan believes the solution to school dropouts and the achievement gap is to lengthen the school day and year. Thirty percent of high school students drop out before graduation, and another 50 percent won’t finish college, according to Education Sector, a nonprofit think tank. For Latino and African-American students, the numbers are more dramatic. About half of them will graduate from high school, the Washington-based group said. While the initiative to lengthen the day and year will certainly be debated the major question to be determined will be how much input classroom teachers will have in the overall discussion. Equally important to any effort to change our schools will be to see if the Obama Administration plans to include teachers in the conversation. Clearly, any effort to improve our schools, regardless of their mer
