Longer school year sought

12/08/2005

Superintendents tout 200-day plan

BY BRIAN BAKST
Associated Press

Minnesota superintendents will press state lawmakers to add five weeks to the school calendar over the next four years, mostly by slimming down summer break.

The 200-day school year goal is a key plank in the Minnesota Association of School Administrators’ legislative platform, which was approved Wednesday by a 20-member board of directors. Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave the idea a warm reception.

“We have one of the shortest school years to be found anywhere, in this country and beyond our borders,” said White Bear Lake Superintendent Ted Blaesing. “We’re stuck in a school calendar that was designed decades ago for another purpose. There’s emphatic evidence that there’s a better way to do business.”

The proposal reignites a debate Minnesota and many states had in the 1990s amid concerns that American students were losing ground to children in other countries.

In 1991, state lawmakers passed a law to build up the school year gradually until it topped out at 190 days in 2004-05. But two years later they repealed the law, leaving it up to local districts to decide.

Minnesota children now spend 170 to 175 days in school.

Students in China, India, Australia, England and Japan all spent more than 200 days in class, said Charlie Kyte, head of the school administrators group.

“If our state recognizes that the way we’re going to compete in the world is by having better-educated kids, we have to take some pretty drastic steps here and this is one of them,” Kyte said.

The Education Commission of the States, which tracks education trends, reports that at least 32 states have school calendars of 180 days or longer.

Kathy Christie, vice president of the group’s research arm, said the push to extend school years has been mostly quiet since the early 1990s.

Bills lengthening the school year are “very hard to pass because they’re so expensive,” Christie said. “It’s an admirable thing to do. It’s just, can you afford it?”

A large chunk of school budgets goes for teacher and staff salaries, which would be more costly if students were in school longer.

The superintendents group also is suggesting that teachers work a 230-day schedule, using the extra time to develop curriculum and analyze student achievement.

Kyte’s early estimates are that the lengthened year for students and teachers will require 3 percent or 4 percent more in education funding annually, potentially adding up to a couple hundred million dollars more a year.

Pawlenty hasn’t seen the specific proposal by the superintendents, but a spokesman said he likes the concept.

“He supports a variety of measures that will increase student achievement and believes this is a useful tool,” said the spokesman, Brian McClung. “It would really make Minnesota nation-leading in yet another aspect of our education system.”

McClung said Pawlenty first wants to examine days off in the current school calendar before tapping into summer vacation time.

Sen. Steve Kelley, a Hopkins DFLer who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said Minnesota students may indeed need more time in the classroom to prepare for college. But he said the superintendents, rather than pursuing a longer school year on their own, should work with teacher groups on ideas for achieving it.

A call to the House committee leader was not immediately returned.

Judy Schaubach, president of Education Minnesota, said the teachers union needs time to study the proposal before weighing in.

If the extra days were subtracted entirely from summer break, it would mean seven weeks off instead of the current 12. But the superintendents say lawmakers should explore shorter but more frequent breaks.

A shorter summer break probably would generate opposition among resort owners, who depend on family trips in late summer and have teens on the payroll.

Tom Day, government affairs director for Hospitality Minnesota, said his group probably would oppose the proposal. He said he isn’t convinced that a longer year improves student learning.

“A great part of student achievement is not just in the schools,” he said. “I got just as much student achievement working a summer job when I was growing up. If you extend the school year, you are going to greatly impact the economic abilities of schoolchildren who are making money to pay for college.”

William Bainbridge, a professor at the University of Dayton in Ohio, has traveled the country promoting a longer school year. Bainbridge, who also is president of the SchoolMatch research and audit firm, said teachers are spending valuable time reteaching concepts after long summer breaks.

“The calendar was designed around an agrarian economy that no longer exists,” Bainbridge said. “Very few children need to be home to harvest crops.”