Lengthen the School Year and Sleep In

Time doesn’t equal quality of course. This is hardly an panacea. But if combined with other reforms can make a big difference. But a poorly run school is going to be a poor school regardless of what regulations one puts in place. There is something to be said for good teachers and administrators and involved parents.

But there are things we can improve that will help all but the worst schools.

“Having talked to the last few generations of teachers the only thing they are impassioned about is the summer holidays and how to blame everyone else for poor technique and care.”

I would really question this statement a bit. Is this just part of the new societal shift to more focus on personal time? Is it a particular demography you are talking to? Or is it just one of those “when in doubt” small talk starters people use.

If you converse with teachers from March on, you’ll certainly hear this statement, but talk to them in Sept Oct and see what is said. There is a reason school shooting season starts in April. The non-perceived intensity does add up and needs a spout. Remove the spout and you are going to have to radically alter the intensity of the working environment. Expect 20-50y for that or any other substantial educational change to produce any benefits.

“Why do you think it would take decades to see any results?”

Pretty well established fact that any educational change takes 20-50 years to be ubiquitous. Tyak and Cuban have a very good book on that fact. You could say adding more time isn’t an educational change, but many of the systems that now operate would have to change before teachers grow into taking advantage of the new possibilities (changing workload levels for them and students, adjusting the way curriculum is covered, etc). Education naturally resists any change because it operates very differently from businesses. It is more a fundamental societal coherer and teachers resist change to fight for the validity of older contexts and beliefs. Education is bombarded by lots of change attempts, but they are almost always superficial (in terms of reaching down to student effects) and quickly fade away.

I can’t imagine removing the honors program in Halifax made much difference other than getting more students frustrated with school. Such programs usually don’t have the specialized teaching needed to compliment such opportunities.

The basic event in Ontario and New York was a change to a more business oriented approach to school change. Think top-down enforcement backed up by standardized testing and lots of pressure directed at teachers. Sort of similar to missions in Europe in the 80′s.

Teachers were seen as the problem. They were perceived as lazy, unwilling to adopt things that obviously work, and just after slack vacations, etc. This led to some serious demotivation and just killed things for students. Achievement tests may have gone up initially, but people were just playing the system. You started losing good teachers and getting a much weaker and smaller pool of applicants. The US’s merit pay approach to teaching has many similar end results via a different vehicle but somewhat similar mindset.

Things changed when the system about exploded with strikes, etc until the Ontario premier got sacked. They then brought in some very good systems people who started accommodating the unstable equilibrium of flexibility and structure. Basically you will see some driftwood in schools, but solving that problem will just cause other types of problems. How do you leverage the extraordinarily high levels of intrinsic motivation teachers have without letting the whole system become too loose or too tight. It all gets back to that John Ralston Saul book on technocracy.

John, back home school went from ~ Sept 1 – June 20th and it seemed fine to me.

Chris, when you talk about specialized support, what do you mean? You mean extra support once the honors program was taken away? I ask because it seemed to me the honors program was a huge success when you and I were in it. Although I did note, surprisingly, that Utah was still more advance in their mathematics teaching for the grade level.

I agree that the shorter days in the north has a big effect. It’s weird getting home at 5 from school and having it already be night time.

The issue of young vs. old kids is a good one. Yet I’d note that not all schools do busing. (The High School where you and I went did not for instance) Obviously this will vary from region to region. But I personally think Americans bus way too much. Of course one could say that there is money saved by having the large 1500 – 2000 student schools and that money goes into the system in other ways.

Regarding achievement tests I worry about them in some ways. But in other ways clearly there is a part of education it can measure and help. (Say in mathematics or spelling) But what I worry happens is that what can’t be measured (say problem solving) gets neglected.

Regarding achievement tests I worry about them in some ways. But in other ways clearly there is a part of education it can measure and help. (Say in mathematics or spelling)

The main problem as I see it is the over extension of the data down to levels where it is no longer meaningful. For instance the type of data you get from standardized test is pretty appropriate for provincial administrators to zone in on how things are working at that level. When you get down to the school level and especially the teacher level you end up, at least in practice, teaching to the test. It doesn’t “have to” be that way, but it is.

But what I worry happens is that what can’t be measured (say problem solving) gets neglected.

Exactly. The type of results you need at the school and teacher level are much more qualitative and generally should focus on things like intellectual engagement etc. Real power comes from triangulating one level of assessment with another, but that is probably one of those unstable equilibrium sweet spots. Most places struggle even getting one side of the assessment coin working effectively. That is why it was so easy to try top down enforcement.