Proposing a longer school year for American school students certainly isn’t going to win President Barack Obama any votes.
And the idea will not be a crowd-pleaser for Peter Edgecomb, R-Caibou, a member of the Legislature’s Education Committee.
Edgecomb has introduced LD 18 to extend the minimum school year from 180 to 185 days.
While Maine technically requires 180 days of schooling per year, as many as five of those can be used for teacher in-service training and other administrative purposes.
So, actually, the minimum requirement in Maine is 175 instructional days.
Another bill in the Legislature would forbid schools from opening before Sept. 1. Such bills usually reflect an entirely different priority — keeping kids at their summer jobs until season’s end.
Edgecomb’s bill would only increase the number of instruction days from 175 to 177, but would increase the number of teacher in-service days from five to eight.
Last September, President Barack Obama pointed out that the average school year for developed countries is 187 days. The average for the European Union is 184.
Some of the countries doing the best in international math and science tests offer more than 200 instructional days, including Korea which leads the way with 220.
Studies on the correlation between a longer school year and educational achievement are mixed.
Some Scandinavian countries, like Finland and Sweden, have much shorter school years than the U.S,, but also have higher test results.
The contradictory results also show that educational systems are hard to compare across cultures.
For instance, results are affected by student and parental motivation. In China and Japan, for instance, students are under intense family pressure to do well in school and to help move their families forward economically.
Japanese parents often arrange tutors for their students after school and on weekends to help them get ahead.
For too many American students, video games and social networking seem to squeeze out homework. Parents, meanwhile, too often seem more involved in their child’s athletic than academic performance.
On thing about education has been proven again and again. During a long summer vacation, U.S. students forget too much of what they have learned. Each fall they must re-learn part of what they have forgotten.
Many educational experts have suggested some sort of rotating school year, where children get several two-week breaks during the year but are in school essentially year round.
And, yes, we can already hear the howls of protest from every quarter, students, teachers, parents and summer employers.
To that we point out that the U.S. is at an educational crossroads. Almost no one is happy with the status quo, and the public seems to think the whole system can be fixed by firing bad teachers.
Firing bad teachers would certainly help, but it can not be the be-all and end-all of educational reform.
Obtaining a good education requires commitment and sacrifice, not just from teachers but from students, parents and society at large.
So long as other countries are willing to make that sacrifice and we are not, we will continue to lag and, ultimately, become less competitive economically.
rrhoades@sunjournal.com
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