Shorter School Days

A lot of parents are shaking their heads at the consideration of a four-day school week, and a longer school day. Shorter school weeks or longer school days are reasonable solutions when there is a shortage of funding, or possible budget cuts coming to the school district. This solution has many mixed opinions from parents, teachers and school board members.

Both longer school days and regular (6.5 - 7 hour) school days have benefits and disadvantages. The Readworks article “Time To Think” discusses both pro’s and con’s about both sides of the argument. Such as, longer school days can cut into after school activities like sports and family time. With regular school days teachers might argue they don’t have enough time to teach students the lesson. While comparing both sides of the argument it appeared that longer school days and regular school days both have the kids’ interests in mind and either way the students will still have a good education.

Some people say that extending school hour's is a bad thing for multiple reason's.I strongly disagree because their are many benefit's to extending school hour's to start at a later time.For example, if state's moved schools hour's to a later time their would be increased performance and reduced absences.There would also be a reduced number of student's falling asleep in class's and much more.

There has always been a controversy as to if the school day should start later on in the morning or not. The University of Minnesota study shows that schools who have already changed the beginning of the school day to later have found that only a third of students actually received eight or more hours of sleep while the students who received less than eight hours reported to have more symptoms of depression, higher counts of caffeine, and substance abuse with alcohol and drugs. In “Should the School Day Start Later?” written by Michael Gonchar, Gonchar writes that, “New evidence suggests that a later start to the school day could have all sorts of benefits…” Some of those benefits could include the decrease of tardiness, increase in attendance, test scores and everyday grades, more positive mental health, and even car crash rates. All in all the research and studies over if the school day should start later has been in discussion for years.

There are many problems that starting school later in the day can solve, but one of the biggest is rising test scores. Did you know that according to The Atlantic “Researchers analyzed data from more than 9,000 students at eight high schools in Minnesota, Colorado, and Wyoming and found that shifting the school day later in the morning resulted in a boost in attendance, test scores, and grades in math, English, science, and social studies”. This proves that when schools start later in the day they get major rewards.

Repeated studies show that when the school day starts later students get more sleep and grades and test scores go up. Even having a 1 hour delay impacted students scores.

Expanding the school calendar will not only lessen the burden of having a limited amount of time to teach everything in the curriculum, but will also make up for lost school hours. This in turn will also decrease the cramming of tests into one semester. Of course going through with any of these plans would mean an increase in school finances and budgeting, which public schools lack since 2011.

Did you know the school board is thinking about making school longer? However, kids already stay in school for 8 hours a day. Therefore, they do not need to stay in school for any longer. Mostly every student and teacher thinks that 8 hours is enough. The school board should not extend the school days because it may cause students to be mentally exhausted, extracurricular activities will be in the morning or people can not do them, and it may cause parents who drive their children to be late to work or students who have jobs after school.

There is no reason why schools shouldn’t extend the school day. The obvious solution to these problems is just to extend the school day and turn it into the four day week. Changing this can help the students now and the soon to be students by giving them a better learning experience and end up doing better in life in general. The extended school day has been used in some schools across the U.S. and has proven to work just as or better than the normal day. The extended school day will not only affect the lives of the students helping them to succeed it will also better our society if the next generation of workers are well educated and

The school board is considering adding an hour and a half to the school day. The extra hour and a half will cause scheduling problems. This would also cause teachers and students to become more tired. Also, this would cause conflicts with family and activities outside of school. For these reasons, the school board should not be extended the school day by one and a half hours for various reasons.

If an hour and half of school were added every day, students would miss after school activities. Students will miss the fun extracurricular activities. and students won’t get the exercise they need.

According to a report from the New York City district, a school that received funds for longer days fared better on standardized tests. This school had seven percent more students scoring at or above grade level in reading, when two other schools had increases of five and six percent. In math, three percent of students scored at or above grade level in a school with a longer day, compared with one percent for a low performing school and an average of one percent for other schools (Brett 1). This information is one example of many studies that illustrate that long school days have a great positive impact on school performance. The main school goals are improving students’ knowledge and building different skills that will help them in the future. Therefore, if longer school days support these educational goals, people should be concerned about improving schools by lengthening the day.

I think students should not have an 8 hour school day. Most kids do not want to go to school longer than 8 hours. On debate.org a poll named “Should School Days be Shorter” show me that 89% of students said yes and 11% said no. My first reason is that “Students would get home much faster and they’ll have more time for homework and other activities after school.”Also, having a shorter school day would get students to have enough sleep and be energized the next day. My second reason is that the school district will save money and this is a quote from education.seattlepi.com. My third reason is that teachers would work fewer hours and therefore, would get less pay.” So I believe having a shorter school day could benefit the school district to save money and use it for field trips and sports. Students and the school district can be successful with a shorter school day.

Less testing, better grades. In one school year there is about 20-25 hours of testing. How would you like to have enough testing for 2 days!!! Thats just way too much for the younger kids. The less Testing the better grades. The is just too much time for the littler kids to handle. One day of testing too much, Less testing, Better Grades.

School days or should be hours or days should be shortened for the health of the students and teachers. They are affected in many ways you would not even imagine. I believe school should be shortened because students do not get proper rest and will be able to pay attention more in class.