The Chicago Public School district is working through problems brought about by its attempt to add 90 minutes to the school day. The contentious issue, pushed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and CPS boss Jean-Claude Brizard, has brought fights with the teachers’ union, complaints from parents and questions about costs associated with the longer day. Several schools, tempted with financial incentives, have already implemented the plan.
Upheaval is the current reality for American schools and teachers. Schools are being asked to do more with fewer financial resources and are also struggling to modify courses and curriculum in order to incorporate the new Common Core State Standards. In the midst of this change, merely adding time to the school day is not going to solve schools’ problems.
I teach at a successful Illinois high school of nearly a thousand students. Our school day runs from 8:15 until 3:15, broken into eight class periods and a twenty minute lunch period. Say we added 45 minutes to each end of the day. That would bring the students in at 7:30 and send them out the door again at 4:00. The other significant issues aside (cost being the biggest; Illinois is a great state for unfunded mandates), I am afraid we’re stretching our students to the breaking point. I don’t see the hoped-for added academic achievement being enough to offset exhausted, burned-out kids.
The extra 90 minutes has to come from somewhere, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention already says that 70% of teens are not getting enough sleep on school nights (between 8.5 and 9.25 hours, as recommended by the National Sleep Foundation). The cliché of the video-game playing teenage slacker notwithstanding, many teens already work very hard in high school and try to get as much as they can from the experience.
My niece was an excellent student in high school. A normal day saw her arrive at school for a 6:45 a.m. practice with the madrigal singers, work through a schedule heavy with honors courses, race home for a quick meal and finally return to school in the evening for a three hour rehearsal for the spring musical. Only then could she go home and do her academic work for the next day.
Jenny, now flourishing at the University of Illinois, was able to make this schedule work, and yet activities that she enjoyed still fell by the wayside. Sports were the first to go, followed by marching band. She didn’t want to drop these activities; in fact, she enjoyed them and was sad to see them go. But her desire to continue to do high quality academic work made these decisions inevitable as she succumbed to the time crunch.
I am not suggesting that we let the extra-curricular tail wag the dog. As a veteran of more than twenty years of teaching and coaching in public schools, however, I can attest to the strong connection between involvement in extra-curricular activities and such benefits as better school attendance, higher academic achievement and improved self-confidence. I am afraid that a longer school day would force kids to drop activities they love and that in turn help them achieve academically.
A speaker addressing schoolchildren in September said it this way, “When you’re still a student you can explore a wide range of possibilities. One hour you can be an artist; the next, an author; the next, a scientist, or a historian, or a carpenter. You can try out new interests and test new ideas. And the more you do, the sooner you’ll figure out what makes you come alive.”
The man delivering that speech? President Barack Obama. I think the president is absolutely right. I just don’t think a longer school day is the way to make those things happen.