Gabriel M. Hildreth
Mrs. Pfaff
ELA
18 February 2017-6 March 2017
Why School Days or School Years Should be Extended
An essay on why American schools should extend the school year or day…
When you think of America what do you see? Do you see a thriving nation or the promise of freedom or rights? America does live up to its reputation. It has the strongest and second largest military in the world. The U.S. is said to have one of the strongest economies in the world, but alas, it is lacking in the education field. According to MBC Times America is ranked 14th in education against other countries even though we spend about 180 days, roughly 940 hours, in school. Not only that, we are ranked below the global average. Meanwhile Idaho, according to Kevin Richert of PEDNEWS.org, was ranked in early 2017 that idaho was in 47th place on the best education only surpassing New Mexico, Nevada, and Mississippi.
“But how do we fix this?” one might ask. Well you as students might not like the answer but the best way to improve America’s low ranking is to extend the school day or go to a year-round school. Now to most of you that doesn’t sound enjoyable.
And that is what my essay is all about, “Why American Schools should have longer school days or school years.” I will begin with extending school days then move on to the school year.
So to begin with I will talk about extending the school day. I chose to do this one first because it’s usually preferred to extending the school year. My first reason is that there is less need for homework. Think of it. If we had more school hours we could work on the would-be homework. Not only that, but you could work in a place meant for working and learning in and you could ask for help when needed. Then, when you get home you’re not stuck in a room doing it. You could be playing outside, spending time with your family, or even better to some, beating that new level on that game you got a week ago.
Another reason to extend the school day is that is the lessons taught would feel less broken. Think of it like this. You’re in class, listening to your teacher up front and everything is going along nicely then . . . Wham! The class ended abruptly but you have some questions that you didn’t get answered. You go home not understanding the assignment completely. That’s what a broken lesson is.
Now I’ll stop briefly to tell you a small story. In Massachusetts, after one year of adding two hours to the school day to ten elementary and middle schools, those schools improved 44% in math, 39% in ELA, and 19% in science. That is a huge gain and they did this faster than the rest of the state. A survey about school day satisfaction stated that 70% of the teachers of those schools said it was better, 23% saw no change, and 7% said it was worse. Also, most of the students loved it!
One kid, in an article Time to Learn: Benifits of a Longer School Day, said that his friends had dropped out because they couldn’t keep up. He said it was because there wasn’t enough time for the teachers to answer their questions and the periods where broken enough that they couldn’t ask those questions.
Do you see what I’m saying? With more school hours in the day the lessons could possibly be completed in one working session or period. You could ask questions and get them answered by the teacher.
If more time would make the lessons feel less broken then we would have more time to finish activities and to get more done. Let’s say you’re on the computer at school finishing a story, an essay, or some other project. You have a really good finishing touch but the school day ends and you can’t take it home. The next day you come back in but you’ve forgotten what you were going to write. That isn’t good especially on a test. Another example would be the bridges the STEM students built. More time would mean the class could build the bridges faster.
In addition I will discuss why the school year should be extended. Most of you probably groaned on the inside. Lets say we have KID Y (year-round) and KID N (traditional-school.) KID Y goes to year-round schooling while KID N does not. KID Y year-round school but his Holiday breaks like Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break are longer. KID N has shorter breaks but he has his normal summer break.
In reality, they both spend nearly the same amount of time and days at school. The days that get taken off summer break just get spread out to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and spring break but there is also the possibility off having a longer weekend. And to reassure you the summer break isn’t completely demolished. It’s usually reduced from 10 weeks to about five weeks. That is plenty of time to vacation, relax, and sleep in.
Similarly it will cut down on brain drain. A study in an article by OXFORD learning says that just after a two month break of no school, on average, a student will lose 20-30% of their academic performance momentum. Over the summer the average student will lose 2.6 months of their math skills and two months of reading skills, but it will, in the end, have a one month overall learning loss. The student will spend around six weeks re-learning what they forgot over the summer. That is time that could be spent on more productive and accelerated learning.
Yet, another reason why an extended school year would be beneficial is that it would be easier to schedule vacations. During the summer many people think it’s great for planning vacations. Remember everyone else is on vacation too so travel can be more expensive. A year-round school provides more frequent breaks so it would be easier to plan family vacations because other schools might not be on vacation.
In addition, the long summer break wasn’t intended for students today. It was intergrated into the system 200 years ago. Originally, summer breaks were not made for relaxation, and fun. Kids didn’t go to school in the summer because they helped on farms. Summer was the crop-growing season. Over time, growing crops became easier and less people farmed, so children weren’t needed to help out. However, the summer break remained.
In the meantime there is less light in winter and that could mean kids will have less light to play in and I have no response for that. The second problem is funding and money. We would need to pay teachers more to work extra hours but not days. This is because, as I said earlier, kids would have about the same number of school days so teachers would have about the same pay. Now, for extra hours that’s different. Yes, it would mean more pay but doesn’t the government want to build more schools or expand them? If so why not use that money to pay the teachers and workers instead.
If Idaho, even the United States, wants to be able to complete nationally and globally in education, they need to change something in their education system. Switching to extended day or year round school is the change that will give us the edge to succeed.
Ultimately the schools success depends on the students’ performance. If the school day or year is extended and it makes the student performance higher, the school can benifit from that and the students would learn more. Isn’t that a win-win in the end? Thank you for listening to my persuasive essay about why schools years or days should be extended.