4 Day School Week in Some Parts of the Country

[Aristotle]

Honestly, this seems like a good idea to me.

Please make sure you read the entire article before discussing the issue here. There are some very interesting points regarding where this has been used.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/12719269.htm

[Jidoe]

Sounds nice. Kids up are still go through a 6-day week (friday being half a day) which really really sucks.

I wonder though if the hour they are adding each day is enough to cover for a whole day lost.

[Lokrian]

Hrm. Anything's worth a shot I guess. If the problem is our schools are not good enough, I can't imagine how this is going to be a good thing in areas where the performance is not already high though.

Still, we learn by doing. Might as well give it a try. If it doesn't work you can always go back to the drawing board.

[Aristotle]

They lose 6 hours from having one less day, and add 1 hour each day to the other days (+4 hours). That is a net loss of 2 hours, but of those 2 hours, 1 hour or so would have gone to lunch, then you have breaks between classes, recess/study periods, etc. I think there actually ends up being no net loss in class time.

Also, it is important to keep in mind that the average number of hours in a public school schoolday is 6-8 hours. The average for homeschooled kids is 2-3 hours. Homeschooled kids *obliterate* public school educated kids, while only spending about 1/3rd as much time at it.

Public school in our country is worthless. There is no accountability for schools, teachers, or administrators. The administrators use their jobs more as political spring boards than as a sacred trust to educate our youth.

The teachers unions and the NEA have an absolute stranglehold on the whole education system. Any efforts to provide accountability for teachers is immediately shot down. Even getting standards in place is almost impossible.

In schools of ALL types (public and private) there is a ridiculous amount of homework being given. Across the country, there are epidemics of elementary and middle school children with BACK PROBLEMS from carrying backpacks overly laden with heavy books. This is nuts. Schools are trying to artificially prove what a good job they are doing by piling on the homework. This is a disgusting fraud.

There are parents on Threshold that have told stories of 50 page term paper assignments in elementary school!!!!!! That is crazy.

I think one of the best solutions at this point is school vouchers. This is another issue where the left disengenuously paints this as a class warfare issue (the rich are just trying to get more money!). The reality is, vouchers are irrelevant to "the rich." They already can afford to send their kids to private school. Vouchers help lower and middle income families become able to afford some choice in their children's education.

Vouchers would also provide accountability since parents could actually vote with their feet and their tax dollars as to which schools are getting the job done.

Ironically, it was the issue of school vouchers that made the well known, and once liberal comedian Dennis Miller change political parties.

I derailed a bit there, but any educational reform issue seems to bring up the voucher issue.


Back on topic, I think this whole thing sounds like a great idea.

There is enormous monetary savings (especially since it is one less day of transportation via high gas costs). It gives teachers and faculty more time to plan their course work, provide tutoring to children who are falling behind, etc.

It really seems like a win-win situation for everyone involved.

[Aristotle]

A little more info about homeschooling vs. public that shows how little value there is to the pure amount of TIME spent in public school:

In 1997, a study of 5,402 homeschool students from 1,657 families was released.

The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. ----

This was confirmed in another study by Dr. Lawrence Rudner of 20,760 homeschooled students which found the homeschoolers who have homeschooled all their school aged years had the highest academic achievement. This was especially apparent in the higher grades.

----

Another important finding of Strengths of Their Own was that the race of the student does not make any difference. There was no significant difference between minority and white homeschooled students. For example, in grades K-12, both white and minority students scored, on the average, in the 87th percentile. In math, whites scored in the 82nd percentile while minorities scored in the 77th percentile. In the public schools, however, there is a sharp contrast. White public school eighth grade students, nationally scored the 58th percentile in math and the 57th percentile in reading. Black eighth grade students, on the other hand, scored on the average at the 24th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading. Hispanics scored at the 29th percentile in math and the 28th percentile in reading.

----

The average cost per homeschool student is $546 while the average cost per public school student is $5,325. Yet the homeschool children in this study averaged in 85th percentile while the public school students averaged in the 50th percentile on nationally standardized achievement tests.

Similarly, the 1998 study by Dr. Rudner of 20,760 students, found that eighth grade students whose parents spend $199 or less on their home education score, on the average, in the 80th percentile. Eighth grade students whose parents spend $400 to $599 on their home education also score on the average, in the 80th percentile! Once the parents spend over $600, the students do slightly better, scoring in the 83rd percentile.

----

In a study released by the National Center for Home Education on November 10, 1994. According to these standardized test results provided by the Riverside Publishing Company of 16,311 homeschoolers from all 50 states K-12, the nationwide average for homeschool students is at the 77th percentile of the basic battery of the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. In reading, the homeschoolers' nationwide grand mean is the 79th percentile. This means, of course, that the homeschool students perform better in reading than 79 percent of the same population on whom the test is normed. In the area of language arts and math, the typical homeschooler scored in the 73rd percentile.

----

In 1991, a survey of standardized test scores was performed by the Home School Legal Defense Association in cooperation with the Psychological Corporation, which publishes the Stanford Achievement Test (SAT). The study involved the administering of the Stanford Achievement Test (8th Edition, Form J) to 5,124 homeschooled students. These students represented all 50 states and their grades ranged from K-12. This testing was administered in Spring 1991 under controlled test conditions in accordance with the test publisher's standards. All test administers were screened, trained, and approved pursuant to the publisher's requirements. All tests were machine-scored by the Psychological Corporation.

These 5,124 homeschoolers' composite scores on the basic battery of tests in reading, math, and language arts ranked 18 to 28 percentile points above public school averages.

----

In Pennsylvania, 171 homeschooled students took the CTBS standardized achievement test. The tests were all administered in group settings by Pennsylvania certified teachers. The middle reading score was the 89th percentile and the middle math score was the 72nd percentile. The middle science score was the 87th percentile and the middle social studies score was the 81st percentile. A survey conducted of all these homeschool families who participated in this testing found that the average student spent only 16 hours per week in formal schooling (i.e., structured lessons that were preplanned by either the parent or a provider of educational materials).

----

For example, the 2,219 students reporting their homeschool status on the SAT in 1999 scored an average of 1083 (verbal 548, math 535), 67 points above the national average of 1016. In 2004 the 7,858 homeschool students taking the ACT scored an average of 22.6, compared to the national average of 20.9.

According to the 1998 ACT High School Profile Report, 2,610 graduating homeschoolers took the ACT and scored an average of 22.8 out of a possible 36 points. This is higher than the national average, which was 21.0 in both 1997 and 1998.

[Lokrian]

Hehe, unions again. I'm not touching it.

My oldest sister, mother and step mother all are teachers. The problems I hear most are related to discipline in the class and the dance you have to do to get the right help for the right problem a child is having. My mother is a fiscal conservative type so I don't know whether she hates the union or not. I have no idea what my sister believes about unions. My step mother is a liberal to the bone and I imagine would defend the union if she were here. She gave me the George Bush rant the last time I visited and after about 15 minutes of it I told her, "You've gone paranoid on me, Lee." She allowed as if it might be true, but she felt she was a high functioning paranoid.

My favorite horror story is this friend of my sister's who had a problem child in her class. He would literally growl at his teaches like a little animal, among other things. He would crawl off by himself in corners, not mind, make noise, etc etc etc. In order to mark him down as disobedient once, the teacher had to tell him seven times. SEVEN times to mark him down as having been told to do something ONCE. You have to have 3 instances of disobedience in I guess a day to send the kid to the office, or something odd like that. Anyhow, so that's 21 warnings per kid per class.

You can't just send any kid who seems to need help to get extra help. If a child is underperforming, he or she can get help. If a kid is performing at the level of his testing but still failing (why the hell are they in the level class they are in if they are performing at their level and still failing?) then they do not qualify for extra help.

So if you are trying and failing, you are out of luck. If you are a little twink who is underperforming and misbehaving, you can disrupt class all day not doing your work then go get help with the classes you were not paying attention to.

???

Bear in mind, I am not a teacher and I may have horribly mangled these stories. But these are along the lines of the sorts of things that I think are making school such a money sinkhole.

Hopefully Cyrinne will chime in here sooner or later. She seems to be the teaching expert.

[Aristotle]

I totally agree that worthless administration is also a huge problem. This includes adminsitrators who will not help teachers enforce discipline and consequences.

I wish I had a link handy to a law suit from, I believe South Carolina, where a teacher is suing as a result of this type of situation. She was repeatedly threated with rape, murder, beatings, etc. by students. When she reported it to the principal, she was told she was "just another white teacher trying to keep black kids down." Nice. Real fucking nice.

Seriously... vouchers. Give parents the affordable option to educate their kids in a school that works.

[Lokrian]

I saw that woman on t.v. That's a scary story. My sister refuses to even consider those sorts of schools to work in. So far she has never had any trouble getting a job in a nicer district.

[Deokoria]

I am not doubting that homeschooling has some major advantages, however I think that these statistics cannot be taken at face value. Other studies have shown (and it is pretty much common sense) that children do better in school when their parents or some other adult in their life takes an interest in their schooling, checks homework, etc. I think it is pretty safe to say that any child being homeschooled has such a person in their life, or they would not be homeschooled in the first place. However, this is certainly not true of every student in public or private school. This, along with other factors, means that you are not comparing similar sample sets.

Additionally, homeschooling allows the instructor to tailor the instruction to the learning style that is best suited for that child. Since the instructor is usually a relative or a close family friend, determining that style is usually fairly straightforward. Public schools will never have this luxury unless class sizes are drastically reduced, and even then, it would be very difficult. I have no doubt that being taught on an individual basis by someone who knows you and your capabilities well would drastically shorten the amount of time for the lesson, but it's just not something that you are going to see much of in a public school.

I have mixed emotions about the fewer days with longer hours issue. After a certain length of time, people - especially younger children - just shut down. That's why there are so many breaks, recesses, whatever in school. The average attention span of an adult is somewhere around 23 minutes, and that of a child is less. Even with breaks, after so long into the day, retention of material learned is going to be less. I guess it would be okay as long as they keep math and science in the morning and put gym last. (As a side note, I read some place but cannot recall the source that employees working a 5 day/8 hour week were more productive than those working a 4 day/10 hour week for the same reasons.)

As for the school voucher system, despite the opposition, I really can see nothing but good about it. It puts the lower income families on a more equal footing with the high income children who already have a choice of schools. In addition, it could get schools to start running themselves like a business. No - I do not mean just to make money. A business has to provide for the needs of their customers or risk losing their customers to another business that takes care of them better. In the current public school system, you don't get a choice no matter how bad the situation is. With the voucher system, you would. Not only would this be wonderful for the students, but it would serve the teachers well, too. In this "business of education", the schools would want to have the best teachers in order to attract as many students as possible. To get the best, you have to be willing to pay so salaries would become more competitive just as it is at colleges and universities.

[Cyrinne]

Originally posted by Lokrian


Hopefully Cyrinne will chime in here sooner or later. She seems to be the teaching expert.

Thank you! I wish I was a policy expert, but I'm really not. All I can ever comment on is my own experience as a teacher, and the research that I've read. I'm flattered you want to hear my opinions though!

From what the article states, test scores in the counties that implemented this policy improved. There are certainly financial benefits. And a half day each week without students would give teachers time for uninterrupted planning with their teams. So there are certainly several plusses. I worry about how young children would handle such a long day. My first graders already seem tuckered out by 2:30, and they still have an hour to go. Some research on the performance in those last hours would probably help systems make informed decisions from an educational perspective as well as a financial one.

As for my opinion on testing an accountabily, I am now beginning the second month of school. I have not been able to hold even one session of small group instruction because I am so busy with testing. The pendulum has swung so very far towards testing/accountabily/performance that there is no time to teach. It is a sad situation for our students, and I hope very dearly that some kind of balance is struck soon.