Most school days in
America are about six-and-a-half hours long, but many schools are trying to
change them to eight hours per days. Their goal is to boost achievement scores
and make their students competitive with other countries (Morgan, 2006). Many people
argue that more time in the classroom would narrow the achievement gap, improve student motivation, and improve
children’s health (Boyd, 2014). However, it also lead to numerous negative
effect, for instance financial strain on school districts, psychological
effects on students and teachers and a lack of research proving the
effectiveness of longer school days (Morgan, 2006).
According to Boyd, narrowing
achievement gaps will only be occurred if a school extended its school time. It is known that the rich families
sometimes give their children’s additional educations with private classes,
camps, and tutors, while low-income students will fall further and further behind.
“Adding to the school day allows schools to give them the same individualized
attention, the same added homework help and tutoring and the same opportunities
to develop their musical, arts, drama, athletic and other dimensions,” say the
authors. In the year after,
Massachusetts tested the Expanded Learning Time Initiative, which added about
two hours to the school days;
participating schools narrowed the achievement gap in English by 35% and
science by almost 15%. Next is
about the improvement of student motivation. Some children may be not happy
about extending their school time, but having the time for studying is also fun
stuff as well as the core material which is necessary to pass standardized
exams. Students in extended-day programs report that the quality of the
teaching changes too; teachers will have more time to answer questions, engage
in dialogue, and get to know students. And having time for recess and
extracurriculars also doesn’t hurt either. The last is improvement of
children’s health. The days when children spent their afternoon biking and
playing catch are long gone, yet many schools don’t have time to offer gym
class or even recess. With a longer school day, the children would have time to
do physical exercise as well as the restless energy that often makes it hard to
focus. The advantages of a longer school year are obvious, but how we’d conduct
it will be less clear. A number of things have to be agreed: parents have to
want it, teachers have to agree to work longer hours, school districts have to
find additional funding and come to terms with teachers’ assosations, and
schools also need to undergo a massive overtake so that students can spend
their time actually learning rather than wilting in failing schools. “Young
people today need exceptionally strong academic skills if they are to thrive in
the 21st Century economy and society,” say Goldstein and Gabrieli. Despite the
difficulties inherent in making systemic change, Time to Learn makes a
compelling argument that students don’t need new schools; they simply need a
little more time.
In the other hand, Morgan declare that
extending school time will lead to financial
strain. For her, even
though two additional hours per day might not seem like a long time to
keep schools running, they can add up to damaging
costs in terms of utilities and staff payment. According to the
National Education Policy Center, increasing school hours would cost the
country an estimated $40 billion. Their study also revealed that extending the
school day was the least cost-efficient plan for greater academic achievement;
hiring more teachers, increasing remedial programs, reducing class size and
implementing more computer facilities all cost less and are more effective. A study by the Wallace Foundation found that the most
successful models were well-implemented and designed, featuring lessons that
captivated students' attention. However, not all school districts have the
educators or resources to accomplish this, resulting in no net gain in student
achievement. Extended the school day could also harm student motivation and
stamina potentially. According to DeSales University, staying late at school,
doing homework in the evening and then returning to school early in the morning
could lead to students’ burnout. It could also cut out student participation
especially in extracurricular activities, because longer school days would
leave little time for meetings or practices. The burnout effects is also
potentially extend to teachers, who may also experience exhaustion and be less
effective as educators. Finally, the idea that longer school days will lead to
greater student achievement is lacking of cohesive evidence. According to
Parent Involvement Matters, countries such as Finland, South Korea and Japan
are outperform U.S. students while they still having a shorter school day. The
Wallace Foundation also reports that while some studies have shown increases in
student achievement with longer school days, the positive results were
inconsistent and wasted over time. The National Education Policy Center
basically concludes that schools should be focused on what teachers do with the
appropiated time instead of how much time they have overall.
As conslusion, extending school time could
result in attention deficit and fatigue, making the extra class time
ineffective, and students will be too tired or mentally exhausted to
concentrate, so the last hour of the day becomes useless (Tucker, 2011).
Although it also leads to positive effects such narrowing the achievement gap
and improvement of student’s motivation and health, this case is lack of research
provement. That is because most researchs have shown that extending school time
will only arise on the negative effects. Overall, according to Sarah Burke, who
is a Boston school parent as well as an inclusion specialist at the Bates and
Conley elementary schools, wishing that the extra time was voluntary. As a
parent, she said, the children do not need the extra time and she is worried
that the longer day will take time away from their homework, afterschool
activities, and down time to unwind. But as a teacher, she said, there are
students in front of her every day who would benefit from more time.
References
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By:
Nanda Rani H.
Academic
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