I've been eager to find something for which I can commend our President and have been disappointed that his first eight months have offered so few opportunities. Nevertheless, I've persevered and have recently stumbled upon something on which he and I agree. The President believes, and I think he's right, that if we're going to improve education in this country we need to extend the school year.
This will, of course, be a very unpopular proposal with students and even more unpopular with employers who utilize student labor during the summer months, but it makes no sense to build multi-million dollar facilities and only use them, at least at full capacity, for 180 days, or so. It also makes no sense to bemoan the sorry state of our students' academic achievement but only devote half the year to their education.
There are arguments against pushing the academic year deeper into the summer, some more compelling than others, but if the quality of our children's education truly is a high priority then doing all we can to get them that education should trump those arguments.
Our current school year is a vestige of a time when students were needed during the summer to work the family farm and also a time when school buildings became saunas in the summer months. With most school districts now sporting air conditioned buildings, and relatively few students working in agriculture neither of those circumstances obtains any longer.
The article linked to above offers two arguments, however, that are admittedly serious objections to implementing a longer school year: The economic effect on businesses that rely on student employees (and those which rely on students with cash in their pockets to buy their wares), and the cost to taxpayers of having to pay teachers for working more days.
I don't know how, exactly, those two objections could best be addressed, but I do think that, in principle at least, President Obama is on the right track in trying to get students, at least the better students, more hours in school.
RLC
