As the Budget Gets Smaller, Class Time Gets Shorter
It’s no secret that state and local budget cuts have been putting pressure on education. A recently published New York Times article discusses one of the many outcomes of this pressure– decreased class time. It seems many institutions are dealing with a smaller budget by creating a shorter school day. “Thousands of school districts across the nation are gutting summer-school programs, cramming classes into four-day weeks or lopping days off the school year.”
This is a surprising development considering our current administration’s stance on education reform. At his 2009 confirmation hearing, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan declared,
“Our school day is too short, our school week is too short, our school year is too short.”
This view is based on several factors, among them our desire to compete with more education-savvy nations who enforce much longer school days. Many educators will also agree that over the summer months, many students forget what they’ve learned and need to be re-instructed come fall.
