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Off The Clock
There is an interesting article on the effectiveness of the currently-popular "Extended Learning Time" (ELT) approach to school reform. The idea is that disadvantaged students need more school time if they are to catch up to their more advantaged peers. The issue is of particular relevance to Ontario, as it embarks on its ground-breaking experiment with universal all-day junior kindergarten.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the article reports that ELT is far from a slam dunk. For one thing, there are a number of unintended consequences - for example, the budget-draining cost of higher teacher and support staff salaries and the tendancy of experienced and highly-qualified teachers to transfer out of schools that bring in ELT. According to the article, students in US states with mandatory ELT policies perform the same as students in states without mandatory ELT policies.
It turns out that simply adding extra school time changes little. "Schools that have succeeded with extended time have done so largely because they include time as part of a more comprehensive reform.... Good schools are made by strong networks that support and demand great leaders, who create and cultivate effective teams of teachers, who really know what and how to teach students. To suggest that our nation's worst schools will be transformed, and that student outcomes will improve, because of more time, is not any different than suggesting that they will be transformed by more money. Both are necessary, and both boast plenty of persuasive adages about why more is better. But both are overly simplistic treatments to the very complex problem of improving education."
Hamsters work long hours on their running wheels, but they don't accomplish a thing.
Schools need good curricula and teachers using direct instruction. Teachers also need to be held accountable for their students’ outcome/merit pay. This would naturally eliminate a great deal of wasted time. To help the teachers become more effective, they should stop social promotion and have standardized exams in order to see which students have mastered the curricula, and of course only pass the ones who can handle the next grade. Right now it’s so nutzzz