Districts considering longer school day and year
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Teacher Chad Rucker listens to ninth-grader Brittany Stone during a cultural literacy class at City High Charter School in the Clark Building, Downtown
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As yet another school year unfolds, some students may bemoan the end of a long summer break.
But students at City High Charter School, Downtown, have had to adjust to a shorter break -- just one month -- because the school operates on a year-round calendar.
"I wasn't used to being in school that long, but I got used to it," said Angelo Carr, a junior.
Rick Wertheimer, principal and co-founder of the school that opened in 2002, said, "We just don't think it's healthy for a student to spend 11 weeks out of their academic routine. That's when they develop bad habits again."
City High is part of a movement to lengthen the time students spend in school and use it strategically.
Its calendar includes 186 days of instruction -- longer than many other public schools-- and about a month off three times a year.
The push for more time in school has won supporters as prominent as President Barack Obama, who last year said the typical American school day puts the nation at a competitive disadvantage over countries where students spend more time in school.
MAKING TIME
- Day One: How schools use the time allotted to them.
- Day Two: What schools do with the extra time in a school day.
- Day Three: Students can make up time they've missed or wasted.
- Day Four: Some colleges plan to offer three-year bachelor degrees.
"We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day," Mr. Obama said.
The comparison has been a repeated refrain since 1983, when a U.S. Department of Education report, "A Nation at Risk," concluded that the lackluster amount of time -- and poor use of it -- in American schools is one of a number of factors that contribute to "a rising tide of mediocrity" in the U.S. education system.
First Published September 6, 2010 12:00 am
