I bet you could get much better results if you took the 20 middle schools the city is going extend the school day at and instead lowered class size to the low 20's or high teens.
In fact, I know you could get better results.
But for some reason, education reformers refuse to sell class size reforms and instead go with the extended school day and extended school year reforms.
Even though lowering class size is a proven reform and extending the school day is not.
My brain tells me that education reformers don't really care about improving performance so much, or helping kids, because if they did, they would choose the reform proven to work over the one that sometimes does and sometimes doesn't.
My brain also tells me that there is another agenda behind the extended school day and extended school year movement:
They want to socialize the kids to expect longer work days with no vacation, garbage pay and, as the Daily News put the extra work the middle school kids will be doing as part of the extended school day program, "toil" when they become working adults in our neo-feudal economy.
It should be noted that the extra time these kids will be learning will be under the supervision of NON CERTIFIED TEACHERS. The extra time will consist of teaching done by non-profit tutors. From my understanding pretty much anybody can be a tutor in NYC and it is an unregulated business. Thus, these kids could end up being instructed by college kids looking to get a 10 bucks an hour. Of course the parents will love this as it is an extra two and half hours of babysitting. Of course the ed-deformers love this as it prepares a future generation to work in sweatshops. Of course the city of NYC loves this as it is cheaper to hire tutors than certified NYC teachers. Of course most NYC teachers love this as they won't be forced to spend the time working with the kids after school. (However, they should have first dibs at filling these positions if they volunteer for them) The only ones who loose are the poor kids who will learn to hate school in a very big way come September.
ReplyDeleteThe kids are going to hate school - 9.5 hours a day of nothing but test prep! Yeah, it's to get them ready for a life of drudgery and toil.
Delete