Education secretary calls for 12-hour school days, longer school year
If Education Secretary Arne Duncan has his way, kids would be spending a lot more time at school — and a three-month summer would be a thing of the past.
Duncan joked with attendees at a luncheon at the National Press Club Tuesday in Washington that he would like schools to stay open 13 months out of the year. Then he told the audience of over 100 that he seriously supports longer school hours.
“In all seriousness, I think schools should be open 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week, 11-12 months of the year,” Duncan said. “This is not just more of the same. There would be a whole variety of after-school programs. Obviously academics would be at the heart of that. But you top it off with dancing, art, drama, music, yearbook, robotics, activities for older siblings and parents, ESL classes.”
He continued by explaining that the American school calendar is antiquated and must be modified so that American students can compete at the highest levels internationally.
“Most people realize that our current day is based on the agrarian economy, and we don’t have too many kids working out in the fields nowadays,” Duncan said. “Schools in countries that are beating us are going to school 25-30 days more than us. If you practice basketball five times a week, you’re gonna be better than the people who practice three times a week.”
Duncan, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, also announced that 19 states are finalists for an estimated $3.4 billion of federal funding through President Obama’s Race to the Top education initiative.
Finalists for $3 billion in federal funding
- Arizona
- California
- Colorado
- District of Columbia
- Florida
- Georgia
- Hawaii
- Illinois
- Kentucky
- Louisiana
- Maryland
- Massachusetts
- New Jersey
- New York
- North Carolina
- Ohio
- Pennsylvania
- Rhode Island
- South Carolina
Race to the Top is part of the Obama administration’s effort to offer incentives to higher performing schools.
“As you guys know, our world has changed, our economy has changed,” said Duncan. “The days of telling kids to go home at 2:30 and having mom there with a peanut butter sandwich, those days are gone. Whether it’s a single parent working one, two, three jobs or two parents working, the hours from 3 o’clock to 7 o’clock are a huge anxiety, and that’s why we have to keep our schools open longer.”
But Duncan explained that although he intends to use the leverage of the federal government to drive reform, he intends to give officials and teachers at the local level the flexibility to improve while also holding them accountable.
“Our blueprint envisions a more humble, realistic federal role in education reform,” Duncan said. “We are a long way in our nation’s capital from our nation’s classrooms. One-sized-fits-all remedies from the federal government don’t work. In fact, one-sized-fits-all remedies tend to stifle creativity at the local level.”
Race to the Top proposes raising academic standards, attracting and keeping the best teachers, improving statewide data systems and promoting collaboration between business leaders and educators.
“Nothing moves people as quickly as the opportunity for more funding, especially at a time like today,” Duncan said.
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Thanks for reading this everyone. I know it’s long. Let me preface my remarks by telling you that I homeschool my kids, my oldest is 14 and has never been in school. My decision was based on my experiences in what was deemed one of the top school districts in my home state. I was a good student,well adjusted and fit in with my peers. There was so much wrong though, that I decided I would not put my children through such utter nonsense. My academic education was great, but there were other, huge problems (for one, the school would not admit to a very bad gang/drug problem).
My homeschooling circle refers to public schools as ‘government indoctrination centers’ as a joke. This article worries me and I don’t think it’s a joke anymore. This is insane – this is taking the role of the parent and replacing it with government. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Are the words ’sieg heil’ echoing in your mind?
When the public school system started giving out free food, they started to replace parental responsibility. There are now parents who have gone through the public school system since they were very young and do not know HOW to be parents. They don’t realize that they are the role models that shape their children. Instead, they are leaving that job to teachers and classroom peers, because that was how THEY were raised! This has fostered a “Lord of the Flies” mentality among so much of our youth. I see it all the time in my neighborhood. Watch the behavior of many children. It is disturbing and disheartening.
Teenagers in the past have been a great resource to our country. They are young, smart, creative and very capable human beings who have much to offer. Instead they are automatically treated like criminals, no matter how good they are and they ‘live down’ to that expectation. (Admiral Ferragut commanded his first ship when he was 12, and yet Abby Sunderland and her parents are whipped publicly for perceived ‘neglect’ for her attempt to sail around the world at age 16.) What about the pioneers? If it hadn’t been for the help of the children/teenagers, we never would have flourished when we went west! (I’m not advocating keeping your kids home to chop wood – just pointing out that our youth should be valued, not marginalized, and childhood is not a condition to be ‘waited out’ – they are willing and able to be members of the community even in their youth!)
What will happen if even more parental responsibility is slowly eroded by the public education system and the government? How badly damaged will THOSE kids end up?
Please watch “The War on Kids” – an Indie Film about how the kids in our country are being treated. Read anything by John Taylor Gatto about how children were once taken out of homes at gun point to start the government’s ‘experiment’ with public school in the 1800’s.
There was a time when parents fought for the rights of their children, for the right to remain a family, now children are being handed over with no questions asked! We’ve already been brainwashed.
Do you know that when you hand your child over to the school, the school acts in locus parentis? That means THE SCHOOL IS THE PARENT! They don’t have to call you or notify you about anything they are doing (as in the case of a girl that was strip searched because the principal was told she had ibuprofen on her). Your child’s constitutional rights are suspended when they walk through that door – as upheld by the Supreme Court.
Do you know that in many schools (no, probably not yours…)children are given ‘treats’ for snitching on their peers?
Do you not find a uniformed police officer, an ‘officer liason’, in each school a little disturbing? What about the trend of calling the police to handle bad behavior? Ok, you might say “high school boys can be pretty big and tough and a teacher can’t possibly handle that!” True, but folks, they are arresting 7 year olds! (Just google it.)
Do you know that homeschoolers have been named as subversives in the Patriot Act? I wonder why? Could it be that we are very clear on our rights as American citizens and the government finds that threatening? You might want to look up that list and see if anything that YOU are involved in is named as being subversive. It’s a maddening list.You are a subversive if you carry around a pocket edition of the Constitution. My husband is a lawyer and has one. Hmm, to quote Shakespeare, “The first thing we do – let’s kill all the lawyers.” (As tempting as that sounds, it refers to how anarchy was going to be created – only the lawyers were going to prevent the descent into chaos.)
Do we really want yet more government influence over our children? Not me, no way, no how!
Please visit parentsrights.org to find out more information about the UN resolution “The Right of the Child”. It may surprise you; please read it carefully if you are interested. I am not affiliated with any of the sites, movies or books I mentioned. I am just a very, very concerned parent and citizen wondering where this is all going. ( Yeah, I know you probably just assumed I’m a Tea Party person, or a dyed in the wool Republican, a hippie, or some conspiracy theorist, but I’m not any of those! Just a free thinking person who doesn’t want to be nailed down by some ‘label’ and I vote across the spectrum for who I think is best at that moment, regardless of their “party”.)
Many of these ‘born on welfare’ kids could use a 12 hour school day to get caught up enough to support themselves when they grow up. Much better to not spend taxes to breed them just to create more demos.
I’m all for students going to school longer if the teachers work for the same yearly salary that the overpaid NEA union members are already being given. We’re getting killed by the Chinese and Indians because those kids study; while our liberal dominated schools worry about tripe and become indoctrinated with left wing pablum. We’re the calf that is being fattened up for the slaughter given our current mis-education system. It’s time we get back to basics and reject the failed liberal policies that have destroyed our once great nation.
Let’s see, Arne. YOU work 12 hour days first – with positive results – for 10 months. Then we’ll talk about it.
Twelve hours a day, seven days a week. That’s 84 hours per week. That’s the equivalent of two full-time jobs. Since the kids would be in school 12 hours a day on weekends, that means no church, no spending Saturday with mom learning to bake brownies, and no riding bikes with dad on a Sunday afternoon. It also means no going to grandma’s to play and hear her stories about the past, no time spent at a family picnic observing how family members handle a conflict when Uncle Mike knocks over the potato salad. It means no time to work with mom and dad on a homework assignment, letting mom or dad add details from their lives that might help the child understand things better. After being in school for twelve hours, what child will want to sit and read a story together with parents and siblings?
There won’t be time for Jimmy to get a paper route and learn that his actions control how much money he makes. Becky won’t have time to volunteer at the animal hospital where the seeds of her career as a veterinarian are sown. Teenagers won’t have the experience of looking after a younger sibling sometimes because they and their sibling will be in school. Mark or Marcy may never get to find out from cooking dinner for the family that they’d really like to be a chef or own a hotel.
We don’t need more supereducated people. We don’t need more hours in class. We don’t need more one-size-fits-all education. We do need schools that have various targeted academic paths to focus on the strengths of students to help them be their personal best. We don’t need everyone to be an Einstein. We do need more people who know how to connect in a community, who can actually cook their own dinner, and who become good parents because they’ve learned how to care for children. Those things have to be caught, not taught by a textbook.
All I have to say here is that I’m so glad my daughter is in a private school and that she has just one year left. Oh, and who says the time of a mom being home for her kids after school is over? I built my career in a way where I’m home for my daughter everyday. There may be less of us moms, but we’re not gone yet.
I’m pretty sure the “more time at school than with mom and dad” is by design. If they could figure out a way to have mandatory government boarding schools with limited and supervised visitation with parents, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
plumlipstick, I read the article somewhat differently than you did, though I hasten to add that from this article alone, I may be misreading it.
Specifically, I didn’t take the longer school hours and seven days a week necessarily to mean any one student would be there that many hours or days. Instead, I took it ti mean better access for the community at large. After all, schools sit empty and unused a fair portion of the time, which has always struck me as rather wasteful.
Consider the example of colleges and universities. I’ve taught as early as 7:00 A.M. and as late as 10:00 P.M. Perhaps administrative offices could be open fewer hours than the rest of the schools, true. Maybe greater flexibility could be introduced into class scheduling, which might help some families in which the parent(s) work unusual hours. Further, maybe class sizes could be kept down a bit.
I’m not a parent myself, but over the years I’ve long fretted about the lack, at all levels, of way too many parents, particularly when their children are growing up., not taking an active role in their kids’ education. I’m not criticizing anyone; a lot of parents may simply not have the time to be going to many school functions. But if schools can get them to take a more direct interest in their children’s education, including at home, surely it would help. I’m from Texas but have lived in first China then Thailand for many years, and in Asia generally, parents do tend to be more involved than some American parents (which is not to say education in this part of the world is perfect — it’s not, not by a long shot).
In other words, I’m getting a sense of expanding the role of schools into areas of community outreach and service. Maybe they could offer for-pay training classes for adults, too, but cheaper than college/university tuition and fees.
I realize no one solution will be suitable for every school and community. Therefore, I like the idea of leaving decisions at the local level while striving to improve and standardize (to a degree) education. And young people need to be urged to tackle the hard subjects, too, including, perhaps especially, in the sciences, engineering, technology, etc. — and I’m an English teacher saying that. Of course, I’d like the students to get a broad-based education up through a bachelor’s degree.
Anyway, that’s mjy take and I hope I’m not misreading. If you’re right, then certainly any student would be greatly overburdened beyond all reason.
Ask Chris Christie is he thinks teachers will work 12 hours a day or longer. hahaha
All schools need to be private schools. Not financed by the public through taxes nor have people I’ve never met indoctrinate my kids with socialism. I refuse to pay for public schools through taxes until at least the provide a better product.