Will a longer school day solve achievement problems?

Chicago’s new superintendent is pushing for an additional 90 minutes to lengthen the shortest school day in Illinois, and some Chicago schools are agreeing to that a year early. On Monday, the Chicago Tribune compared Chicago’s short school day with some suburban districts’ school days, and lo and behold, there wasn’t a whole lot of difference.

Does this mean suburban schools need to lengthen their school days, too?

In a society where more sometimes equals better, it's tempting to quickly say yes. The trouble is that we always want to solve huge problems (poor student achievement) with seemingly easy solutions (longer school day). 

Remember the last solution to this problem? No Child Left Behind. Has that improved student achievement, particularly in troubled urban areas? The answer is not really (and the topic is so huge that I’ll save it for another blog).

If only education were so simple. As long as kids are complex human beings who learn at different rates and who learn differently; as long as families continue to be unique and varied in their willingness and/or ability to support their children’s education; and as long as society and culture continue to have an influence on how children are brought up, there can be no simple solutions to such a complex problem.

The issue of student achievement is an important one because it impacts all of us no matter where we live. It behooves us to have an educated populace.  For example, if most of the children in some urban schools aren’t achieving, they may look at themselves as failures. They’ll probably drop out of school and from there have few choices in life. Often they’ll live in poverty, continuing the cycle, which means the government—that’s you and me—will support them.

Playing the blame game will get us nowhere with this. If the solution were simple, we would have done it years ago.

So, do we know what really makes the difference between a successful school and one that isn’t?

The research is out there, and there are many factors, once again pointing to the complexity of the problem. Today, let’s start with the variable that is often considered most important: family background.

First, let’s look at the make-up of our suburban communities. Just the fact that the parents are more educated (high school diploma or more) makes a tremendous difference in the life of a child. How? One of the first things that impact young children is the development of language. In educated households, children are exposed not only to a lot of language, but to an incredible variety of words as well. Another huge influence on children’s achievement is parental support and expectations. Educated parents want their children to succeed. From the beginning, they get excited about every little thing their child does and they reinforce new learning at each step. They aren’t even consciously doing this—it’s just a natural response to their child.

By the time these children begin school, they’re ready to learn: not only do they have their supplies, backpacks and new clothes (things that children living in poverty don’t have), they already know some letters and sounds, have good language skills, know that school is important and that they’re expected to learn. By the age of 5, these kids have been taught by their parents that school is a great place to be because they’re going to learn. Their parents continue to talk to them about their learning and continue to reinforce it at home.  That’s what’s meant by strong parental support and involvement.

Kids who come from poverty (low socio-economic status) and whose mothers have less than a high school education are at greater risk. Uneducated parents use less language with their children, and the language they use is often repetitive and negative (telling them no, stop, they’re bad, etc.). While they may value school, they don’t always have the ability or the resources to support their children at home. They may not know how.

So which children will benefit from being in school more? Absolutely it’s the children from poverty.

However, I hope you can see that the answer isn’t that simple. Rather, we need to find ways to reach out to these families, to help them support and reinforce their children’s learning. Chicago schools’ chief Brizard knew what he was talking about when he suggested teachers make home visits. Sometimes teachers don’t understand what home life is like for some of their students, and often the parent is intimidated by teachers. The former school dropout isn’t likely to warm up to her child’s teachers, so it’s important for the teacher to reach out to the parent.

Improving student learning requires a multi-pronged approach. Some kids learn so quickly and easily that they might benefit from a day that’s structured quite differently (shorter?) than the typical school day. Others may have trouble concentrating or focusing or understanding, and they, too, need learning structured differently for them. The hurdle for those from immigrant families is learning how to speak English. It’s hard for an English Language Learner (ELL) to demonstrate learning when language is a barrier. Beyond these needs is the importance of addressing how to teach and motivate students, especially those who haven’t really had success with learning and see themselves as failures.

Caution should be used when settling for a “one-size-fits-all” approach. Solutions to each of these issues are huge and complicated. More time is just one aspect to consider.