Officials considering longer school days

The NEA has no official opinion on extending the school day.
BOSTON (AP) -- School principal Robin Harris used to see the clock on her office wall as the enemy, its steady ticking a reminder that time was not on her side.
But these days Harris smiles when the clock hits 1:55 p.m. There are still two more hours in the school day -- two more hours to teach math and reading, art and drama.
Harris runs Fletcher-Maynard Academy, a combined public elementary and middle school in Cambridge, Mass., that is experimenting with an extended, eight-hour school day.
"It has sort of loosened up the pace," Harris said. "It's not as rushed and frenzied."
The school, which serves mostly poor, minority pupils, is one of 10 in the state experimenting with a longer day as part of a 6.5 million program.
While Massachusetts is leading in putting in place the longer-day model, lawmakers in Minnesota, New Mexico, New York and Washington, D.C., also have debated whether to lengthen the school day or year.
In addition, individual districts such as Miami-Dade in Florida are experimenting with added hours in some schools.
On average, U.S. pupils go to school 6.5 hours a day, 180 days a year, fewer than in many other industrialized countries, according to a report by the Education Sector, a Washington-based think tank.
One model that traditional public schools are looking to is the Knowledge is Power Program, which oversees public charter schools nationwide.
Those schools typically serve low-income middle-school pupils, and their test scores show success. Pupils generally go from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the week and for a few hours every other Saturday. They also go to school for several weeks in the summer.
That amounts to at least 50 percent more instructional time for pupils in such programs than in traditional public schools, according to the report.
The extended-day schedule costs on average about 1,200 extra per pupil, program spokesman Stephen Mancini said.
Massachusetts is spending about an extra 1,300 per pupil on its extended-day effort.
Most of the extra cost goes into added pay for teachers. At Fletcher-Maynard, senior teachers can make up to 20,000 more per year for the extended hours, Harris said. Not all of the school's teachers have opted to work longer hours.
The National Education Association, the largest teacher's union, has no official opinion on extending the school day.
But its president, Reg Weaver, said teachers probably would support the idea if, like in Massachusetts, they could choose whether to work the longer hours.
He also said teachers must be adequately compensated and should have a say in setting the goals of any such effort.
No Child Left Behind
An important impetus for the debate around extending school hours is the federal No Child Left Behind law.
The five-year-old law requires annual testing in reading and math for grades three through eight, and again in high school. All pupils are expected to be working on grade level by 2014.
Schools that fail to meet annual benchmarks are labeled as needing improvement and have to take steps to address the problem.
Up against such a tough requirement, extending the day makes sense, Harris said. "If you want kids to read, and you want to teach them how to read, they have to have time reading," she said.
Kathy Christie, a policy analyst at the Denver-based Education Commission of the States, said that law "has put enough pressure on more people to realize that the traditional school day is not enough to catch kids up."
Christie, whose Denver-based nonprofit focuses on school reform, added, "You can't keep taking away recess."
Schools that are experimenting with longer days are adding more down time and enrichment courses, as well as reading and math.
At Edwards Middle School, an extended-day school in Boston, pupils are staging musicals, designing book covers for favorite novels and coming up with new cheers to boost school spirit -- an activity favored by 13-year-old Janice Tang.
"This is a class where I can express myself, be active," Tang said one afternoon after she pumped her arms in the air during a girls-only class that incorporates cheering with topics such as sex education and discouraging smoking. "It's very cool, and I have fun a lot."
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