Welcome
Like a freakin’ zombie, the idea to lengthen the school year never dies. I do my best to slay the "undead" in this week’s CommenTerry.
Bulletin Board
- The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring a workshop, "The Truth About Wind Power on the Coasts of North Carolina," on Tuesday, December 6, at 7:00 p.m. at Joslyn Hall on the campus of Carteret Community College in Morehead City. Experts Daren Bakst, John Droz Jr., and David W. Schnare will present "an alternative view of wind power and what it would mean to North Carolina’s coastal communities." The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
- The John Locke Foundation invites you to a Headliner Luncheon on Thursday, December 15, at noon at Sisters Garden in Raleigh. Tim Carney, senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner, will discuss "Big Business and Big Government vs. The Free Market." For more information, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
- The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle-school and high-school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to the NC History Project web site for further information.
- Visit JLF’s research newsletter archive.
CommenTerry
For years, members of the State Board of Education have championed the idea of lengthening the school year. They assert that nations such as Japan and Korea outperform the United States on international assessments because these countries exceed the number of days of instruction required by most U.S. states. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, both Japan and Korea require students to attend over 200 days of school each year. On the other hand, the North Carolina General Statutes require students to attend school "a minimum of 180 days and 1,000 hours of instruction covering at least nine calendar months."
Earlier this year, the N.C. General Assembly obliged state education leaders by increasing the state’s requirement to 185 instructional days and 1,025 instructional hours. However, the legislature also allowed the State Board of Education to grant waivers to school districts that pledged to use one or more of the additional days as teacher workdays (see Section 7.29 of the Appropriations Act of 2011). At their December meeting, the State Board of Education postponed their decisions on waiver requests from 69 school districts and 4 charter schools. Although they agree with the decision to lengthen the school year, members of the board complained that school districts do not have the funding to comply with the legislature’s "unfunded mandate." Postponing action on the waiver requests was a politically savvy move that allows the State Board of Education to keep the issue alive through next year.
The politics of the school year debate has dominated media coverage of the issue, but two outstanding research questions remain unanswered. First, do students in higher performing nations spend more time in the classroom? Second, is there any correlation between the length of the school year and student performance?
To answer the first question requires a change in metric. Although proponents of lengthening the school year prefer to compare annual days of instruction, it is more accurate to compare annual hours of instruction because the length of the school day varies from nation to nation.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the annual average compulsory instruction time of their member countries was 749 hours for 7-8 year-olds, 793 hours for 9-11 year-olds, 873 hours for 12-14 year-olds, and 902 hours for most 15-year-olds (see Facts and Stats below). North Carolina’s new, 1,025-hour requirement positions the state well above the international average for all age groups.
What about those high-flying nations like Japan and Korea? According to the latest international comparisons, Japanese middle school students average 868 hours of annual instructional time, while their Korean counterparts average 867 hours. Likewise, most of the high-performing nations in Europe, including Finland and Belgium, spend fewer hours in the classroom than the average public school student in North Carolina.
In addition, empirical research has yet to find a clear association between learning time and student performance. In a 2008 article published in Phi Delta Kappan, Stanford University professor Larry Cuban pointed out that years of research "showing achievement gains due to more time in school are sparse; the few studies most often displayed are contested" (p. 243). Of course, I do not discount reforms that couple longer school days with higher quality instruction for targeted groups of students; KIPP charter schools have used that formula to raise achievement among low-income students. The difference is that statewide or districtwide increases in the length of the school year (or day), by themselves, are unlikely to boost student achievement in any significant way.
Even if North Carolina school districts had sufficient funding to lengthen the state’s already lengthy school year, evidence suggests that it would not be a wise investment of taxpayer resources. Regrettably, this point is lost on the state education leaders and elected officials who continue to wrangle over the idea.
Random Thought
Apparently, Smucker’s Uncrustables have a huge following. Yet I am still not sold on the idea of a crustless peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Facts and Stats
Mailbag
I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].
Education Acronym of the Week
OECD — Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
Quote of the Week
"Like the larger public, I am unconvinced that requiring students and teachers to spend more time in school each day and every year will be better for them. How that time is spent in learning before, during, and after school is far more important than decision makers counting the minutes, hours, and days students spend each year getting schooled. That being said, I have little doubt that state and federal blue-ribbon commissions will continue to make proposals about lengthening time in school. Those proposals will make headlines, but they will not result in serious, sustained attention to what really matters — improving the quality of the time that teachers and students spend with one another in and out of classrooms."
— Larry Cuban, "The Perennial Reform: Fixing School Time," Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 90, No. 04, December 2008, pp. 240-250.
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