Obama would reduce the summer holidays

Students beware: The summer vacation was just enjoying drastically reduced if President Barack Obama gets his way.
Obama said that American children spend very little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage to other students around the world.
“Now, I know more school days and school years are not popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours.” But the challenges of the new century, more than demand in the classroom. ”
The president, who has a sixth grader and third grade, wants schools to add the class time, which stay open late and letting the kids weekends so they have a safe place to go.
“Our school calendar is based on the agricultural economy and not too many of our children are working in the fields today,” Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.
Nakany fifth grader Camara is of two minds. She likes the program for four weeks during the summer at his school, Brookhaven Elementary School in Rockville, Maryland Nakany enjoys seeing his friends there and believes that the summer school helped its ratings on two C to the honor roll .
But she wants a longer school day. “I would walk straight toward the door,” he said.
Domonique Toombs felt the same when he learned that he stayed three additional hours each day in sixth grade in the Boston Clarence R. Edwards Middle School.
“I was like, ’Wow, are you serious?” He said. “That’s three hours I will not be able to relax with friends after school.”
Your school is part of a 3-year-old state initiative to add 300 hours of school time in almost two dozen schools. The first results are positive. Domonique Even reticent, who just started ninth grade, he feels differently now. “I’ve learned,” he said.
Does Obama want every child to do these things? School until lunchtime? Summer school? And what about the idea that children today are overscheduled and need more time to play?
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Obama and Duncan say the children in the United States needs more school because children in other countries have more of school.
“Young people in other countries go to school 25, 30 percent of our students,” Duncan told the AP. “I just want to level the playing field”.
While it is true that children in many other countries have more school days, is not true that all spend more time at school.
Children in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 annual hours of instruction) that children in Asian countries that consistently outscore U.S. in math and science tests – Singapore (903), Taiwan (1050), Japan (1005) and Hong Kong (1013). This is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have more years of school (190 to 201 days) that has the U.S. (180 days).
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Regardless, there is a strong case for adding time to the school day.
Researcher Tom Loveless of the Brookings Institution, looked at the math scores in countries that added instructional time in math. Scores increased significantly, especially in countries where the added minutes a day, instead of days per year.
“Ten minutes sounds trivial for a day of school, but do not forget, these periods of mathematics at the U.S. average of 45 minutes,” Loveless said. “Percentages, which is a very healthy increase.”
In the U.S., there are many examples of the benefits when the time is added to the school day.
Charter schools are known for having more school days or weeks or years. For example, children in the network of 82 KIPP charter schools around the country go to school from 7:30 am to 5 pm, more than three hours longer than the typical day. They go to school every Saturday for three weeks in the summer. KIPP eighth-grade classes than the school district averages on state tests.
Massachusetts Expanded Learning Time initiative, the initial results indicate that children in some schools perform better on state tests than children in regular public schools. The extra time, that schools can add hours or days, is for three things: basic academics – children who struggle in English, for example, receives an extra English class, more time for teachers and enrichment time for children.
Regular public schools are adding time, too, but this is optional and not usually part of the regular school day. Your calendar is practically unbreakable. Most states set the minimum number of school days to 180 days, although some requires 175 to 179 days.
Several schools are going all year by shortening the summer holidays and other breaks elongation.
Many schools go beyond the traditional model of summer school, where schools of recovery to give children who failed or left behind.
Summer is a crucial time for children, especially poor children, because poverty is linked to problems that interfere with learning, such as hunger and less parental involvement.
That means that poor children almost entirely dependent on their learning experience at school, said Karl Alexander, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, home of the National Center for Summer Learning.
Disadvantaged children, in general, making no progress in the summer, said Alexander. Some studies suggest that in reality recedes. Richer children have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and do their best to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, holidays, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.
“If your parents never finished high school with low literacy and reading for pleasure is not wired, it’s hard to be a good model for their children, even if you really want to be,” Alexander said.
The extra time is not cheap. The Massachusetts program costs an extra $ 1,300 per student, or 12 percent to 15 percent more than regular per pupil spending, said Jennifer Davis, founder of the program. It received more than 17.5 million U.S. dollars from the state Legislature last year.
Montgomery County, Maryland, summer program, which includes Brookhaven, received $ 1.6 million in federal incentive dollars to operate this year and next, but only lasts 20 days.
In addition to improving academic achievement, Education Minister Duncan has a vision of school as community center. Duncan, who was head of schools in Chicago, grew up along with the study of poor children on the south side of town, as part of the tutoring program her mother still works.
“These hours are 3.7 times of great anxiety for parents,” said Duncan. “They want their children safe. Families are working on one and two and three jobs now

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