AN EDUCATION MOVEMNT that appears to be gaining momentum these days is the extension of the school day. Proponents reason that students need extra time and opportunities to increase learning. Others claim that adding more classroom hours will provide more time for remediation. Some educators openly suggest extra time is needed mainly to prepare students for state achievement tests.

This myopic logic begs the question: Is more better? Is more time in school beneficial to students?

An analogy comes to my mind in answering. Before I was a superintendent, I worked as a teacher and basketball coach. As a coach, I never subscribed to the theory that “practice makes perfect.” I preferred the axiom that only perfect practice makes perfect. Anyone who has ever attempted to master a skill will realize that practicing the same chore without improvement will not be profitable no matter how much time is committed.

Sublime Claims
While some reasoning for extending the school day may be sound, research does not always connect more time in school to increased learning. Reports from the National Academy of Educational Sciences indicate that for every 10 percent increase in time, the results have yielded just a 2 percent increase in actual learning. Indeed, there is a dearth of data to correlate the increase of learning with an extended day as reported by Robert Schacter in the Scholastic Administrator magazine.

While scattered school districts report gains in test scores following the use of extra time, data have not been provided to show increased learning. Yet public supporters continue to propagate some advantages that range from the ridiculous to the sublime. One advocate reasoned that a 9 to 5 school day would actually prepare students for the world of work.

Critics of expanding the school day, including me, believe it would only produce students’ ennui and would make students hungry and unmotivated in late afternoon at schools where lunch is served well before noon. Further, elementary school students could experience a drop in their attention span with extended time in school.

Perhaps it’s time to stop the debate and concentrate on the purpose of schooling. If we truly want to raise learning rather than test scores, we ought to focus first on quality. Maybe better teacher preparation in college is one answer. Perhaps greater gains might come from teachers who learned how to develop higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills and promote active learning rather than the passive accumulation of facts.

Refined Preparation
When I was an undergraduate at a state teachers college, we took courses on preparing motivational lessons and speaking effectively. There was practice teaching in the public schools in both the junior and senior years. In addition, there was a mandatory course in educational psychology during which we were taught the learning theories of John Dewey, Jean Piaget and Jerome Bruner. A quick check of the curricula in teacher preparation colleges today reveals these courses no longer are offered.

When I was a new coach, I scheduled a Saturday practice in an effort to improve the team’s win-loss record. An older and wiser coach cautioned me about this, saying, “Son, you can work those boys until they are dead tired and it’s not going to bring you any closer to a state championship.”

Maybe he was right. A concentration of quality time rather than an excess of time is really what impacts results. One axiom we all know to be true is that quality education begins with the classroom teacher.


JACK KAUFHOLD, a retired superintendent in North Carolina, is the author of three books.