If voters fail to pass the tax initiative proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown on the November ballot, some school districts may have to shorten the school year to 160 days. Below is cartoonist Tom Meyer’s take.
Shortened school years leave parents on their own to tutor children, not an ideal pedagogical solution. Increasingly parents may turn to educational technology, for which, at the moment, there are not many standardized and evidence-driven successful models. It may become increasingly common to utilize learning apps; we are in the Wild West phase of this nascent technology, as tech-savvy engineers create interactive apps, but what is being learned? The timing is worrisome, just as literacy and accomplishment rates are under fire.
I think less important than the absolute comparison of number of schooldays is the relative impact of the change on our particular system. It’s not uncommon for countries with more schooldays to have a shorter school day. And I believe Finland has one of the lowest number of instructional hours per year of many countries. That obviously hasn’t hindered them too greatly. So I think the fact that we are simply lopping off instructional time without making any other changes to society or the system (other than lopping off other resources as well) can only be a net negative.
As it WAS, a 180-day school year was already less than most of the planet. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles has extended the school year to 200 days to better prepare students to be successful and academically prepared to take their places along side those getting a rigorous education in other countries.
Sell off the runway to build a high speed train to nowhere.