Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Longer School year says Arne Duncan
Who pays the bill?

"Go ahead and boo me," Duncan told about 400 middle and high school students at a public school in northeast Denver. "I fundamentally think that our school day is too short, our school week is too short and our school year is too short."
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_12090068?source=rss

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing its like watching some idiot start a fire and then try putting it out by pouring out more gasoline. Why would anybody want more school? Okay, boo me.

Anonymous said...

Lets sell 'save our schools' math bonds to the Chinese and guarantee payment with surplus Everyday math textbooks. According to UW education professors: They're as good as gold.

Anonymous said...

Seems like some hackers from China (where else) broke into our 'secure?' US electrical grid system and even left us with some Trojan horses to find. Why don't our teenagers learn some programming, instead of yech! powerpoint. We've got some real chld prodigies! Yep, that's for sure. Thank you Microsoft.

Anonymous said...

a longer school day, a longer school week, and a longer school year

more time to fine tune those powerpoint skills and make sure students can create a single powerpoint that uses every feature

I am not in favor of this at all. If I felt the schools used the available time well I would be okay with more time. Way too much valuable instructional time is wasted.

They would use more time for students to put their portfolio together and prepare for student led conferences and other Navigation activities.

Student led conferences---the schools sure have the parents on that one. As a parent, even if you do not believe in student led conference (and really want a conference with the teacher instead, but, oops, that isn't an option) are you not going to go just to support your child who has been using valuable instructional time all year putting things together for this event. You are going to go in support of your child and the school is going take that to mean you support student led conferences. You can't win.

I guess when the teachers aren't teaching, they have to do something with the time.

No thanks, Arne. The schools haven't been responsible with the time they have available already. Why give them more? You already are giving them more of my tax dollars when they haven't shown positive results with the money they already had.

Oh, I get it now. Arne, you are with the feds now. You are just going to make there be 25 hours in a day. You are so creative and have such marvelous solutions.

dan dempsey said...

And from D-Ed reckoning:

http://d-edreckoning.blogspot.com/2009/04/duncan-more-class-time-and-more-choice.html

Rick & Cathy said...

Longer school days a good thing? Depends. In our high school, kids have six periods of classes, many of which are taught in a manner where they receive almost exclusively lectured materials. They have little or no work time or time to reflect on what they have learned. It becomes a constant stream of information without interruption. Of course, we know why there are no free periods and they have nothing to do with education. But if you are a teacher, imagine how much your effectiveness would suffer without a planning period to administer, reflect, adjust, or improve your instruction? Students need that time as well. So, to keep the same amount of instructional time and to add some auxiliary time, the day would need to be longer.

Anonymous said...

edreckoning needs a lesson in logic.

"Duncan's comparisons with foreign countries is misplaced. The U.S. is competitive with foreign countries once you control for demographics.

Our white students are competitive with white students from European.

Our Asian students are competitive with Asian students from Asian countries.

And no country does a particularly good job educating black and Hispanic students in large numbers."

What a bizarre racist comment. Capital U-for American as in 'Ugly'. And you wonder why the US is so despised by some, but not all.

Anonymous said...

Clearly most of those posting here didn't read the article. If you did you'd realize that he was in Denver because Denver is a school district that has implemented a "merit" pay system. He chose Denver because he wants students AND teachers to work harder and longer. This board seems more like a place to pop off than for thoughtful discussion.