Obama and Duncan say kids in the United States need more school because kids in other nations have more school.There you have it. The Obama administration doesn't care about reality when it comes to education. The President has attached himself to the wrong side of this issue, not to mention the wrong SOE, Arne Duncan, who was by most accounts a failure as CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
"Young people in other countries are going to school 25, 30 percent longer than our students here," Duncan told the AP. "I want to just level the playing field."
While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days, it's not true they all spend more time in school.
Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests - Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).
We don't need longer school days. We don't need more school days in the year. We need better days.
We need:
- Early childhood education
- Universal health care
- Jobs, jobs and jobs
- To repeal NCLB as well as the testing regime
- To deepen the curriculum, not narrow it