There was an era when school-aged youth spent summers with their parents, whether it was working the family farm, completing long-pending chores or planning the big family vacation.
Those days, lamentably, are gone.
Teens of working age are in jobs earning cash for college or headed to parent-free (yet parent-paid) mission trips or vacations.
Indiana summers, based on an agrarian economy, are gone.
That’s one reason we believe summers could be shortened to allow for more instructional time.
The idea is getting quite a bit of debate, following President Obama’s remarks earlier this year that, “The challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”
In Indiana this July, Schools Superintendent Tony Bennett told a Columbia City gathering, “We ought to be for a longer school day, a longer school week, a longer school year,” Bennett said. “We ought to be for all the things kids hate.”
We assume he was speaking tongue-in-cheek.
“We need to look at how do we get our kids in school all year long,” Bennett said.
We agree with the intent of his message: the more time in school, the more students should theoretically learn.
However, we hope there is consideration to an extension of the school calendar.
Daily school hours have been set to accommodate athletics and extracurricular activities, but they also respect the need for family togetherness in the evening. We’re comfortable with the current school day arrangements.
The implementation of a longer school year is indeed costly due to teacher salaries, school transportation costs and the loss of income for summer workers and to traditional vacation spots such as amusement parks, where many teens work to get college money. We can just imagine the debate in the General Assembly over restructuring school funding.
We’re not adverse to extending the calendar beyond 180 days —which is traditional across America — to 190. Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years, between 190 to 201 days. And children in Asian countries routinely register better math and science scores than the U.S.
Indiana lawmakers are studying school hours and calendars through the Interim Study Committee on Education. The third meeting is set for 1 p.m. on Oct. 26 in the Statehouse and will be broadcast over the Internet. Discussion has focused on whether to start the school year earlier, afterschool programs and adult education.
We hope the discussions get down to the need for a longer calendar as a way to improve results. Indiana students are struggling as ISTEP results have shown. We need an edge up for our students and a longer school calendar is an option that should be considered.
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