The case for longer school days
IT'S A long-overlooked issue that has finally arrived on the State House agenda: reshaping the day for Massachusetts students.
In last week's State of the State speech, Governor Mitt Romney embraced the idea of a longer school day, though initially only for failing districts. Also last week, Attorney General Thomas Reilly stressed the importance of after-school programs during an appearance before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. And the legislative leadership has expressed a willingness to consider new approaches.
Indeed, more school time has become a favored nostrum on the television series "The West Wing."
That's all gratifying for Chris Gabrieli, a venture capitalist and past (and possibly future) political candidate, who has been working for years to promote more learning time in his role as chairman of both Boston's After-School for All Partnership and Massachusetts 2020, a nonprofit foundation. His efforts have helped boost the number of Boston kids in after-school programs from 25,000 to 50,000, which means about half the student population now participates.
"I am really glad Romney has embraced this," Gabrieli says, adding that he hopes the issue won't take on partisan overtones. "This is not something that ought to be politicized."
Educational experts say the current school schedule, long locked in at six hours a day, 180 days a year, no longer makes sense.
"I view offering a longer school day for those who need it as one of the last frontiers of education reform," says Paul Reville, executive director of MassINC's Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy.
Currently, when you include summer and vacations, American kids spend 80 percent of their waking hours out of school. Even on school days, they actually devote almost as much time to watching TV or playing video games (5.5 hours) as they do to class (6 hours), says Gabrieli.
Meanwhile, the unsupervised time between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. is a period rife with potential perils for teenagers. "Engaging kids for more hours is the number one way to reduce smoking, drugs, alcohol, teenage pregnancy, and violence," says Gabrieli.
In an era when most mothers work, a more structured day would help parents who have to worry about afternoon child care or activities.
Policy-makers could approach the matter either by offering after-school programs or by extending the actual school day. Either way, educational programming should be part of the effort.
Certainly in most other developed countries, kids spend more of their time in school than do kids in the United States. In contrast to our 180-day school year, many of our competitors have 200 days or more. And while American students spend an average of 1,460 hours in core academic classes during their high-school years, German and Japanese pupils spend more than double that time.
One explanation for the achievement gap between kids from middle-class families and those from poor families is the difference in what they do after 2; as Gabrieli notes, many kids from upper- and middle-class homes are already in some sort of afternoon program, while fewer less affluent students are.
A longer school day is one tool charter and pilot schools employ; 69 percent of the state's charter schools have at least 15 percent more school time than the traditional public schools. And seven of the nine high schools that the Rennie Center identified in 2003 as the state's best-performing urban high schools had extended learning time. Even if that extra time were only used for tutoring or helping with homework, it would help improve educational quality.
Meanwhile, both the 1983 "A Nation At Risk" report that raised the alarm about poor educational quality in the United States and the Commonwealth's 1993 education reform act called for expansions of the school year. "Zero has happened," Gabrieli says.
That's a shame. The time has come for a more structured day and a longer year, and not just in the underperforming districts. There is, of course, a question of resources. But by staggering teaching hours and aggressively enlisting community organizations, college students, and volunteers, much could be done.
"For at most 20 percent more, you could extend every school day to 5 or 6 o'clock and lengthen the school year some," says Gabrieli.
After a decade of hard work, Massachusetts has boosted most of its kids to a level of minimum competency. As we begin to focus on proficiency, more structure and more learning time should be essential parts of that effort.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
