Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 8, 1992 TAG: 9203080046
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But on the other side of the ocean, the thinking is the reverse. Japanese officials are hoping to foster more well-rounded and less-pressured students like those in America and other countries by shortening the school year.
"Students need more free time to do various other things than academics and memorizing," said Shinichiro Horie, educational attache at the Japanese Embassy in Washington. This fall, all Japanese public schools will cut 11 days off the 243-day school year, closing one Saturday a month.
Eventually, if the plan goes as expected, Japanese schools will no longer open on Saturdays and the five-day school week will become law.
"We were urged by the U.S. example," said Osami Shima, spokesman for the Japan Teachers Union in Tokyo. The pressure to study long hours in both public schools and private "juku" or "cram schools" has stifled "the spirit of individualism," he said. "Creativity is hard to find."
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Massachusetts, New Jersey and just about every U.S. state, superintendents are saying they would not mind trading a little American individualism for more A's.
One way to make the work force more competitive, they argue, is to mothball the current 180-day American school calendar, devised in the 19th century and out of sync with those in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Germany.
"We are almost into the 21st century and here we are working with a calendar designed to provide helping hands on the farms and ranches in the 1800s," said Charles Ballinger, executive director of the National Association for Year-Round Education. "As far as I can see, there are very few students in Cleveland, Boston, New York, Miami and San Francisco who need the summer off to work on the farm."
"It's an inevitable change that will happen but will take time," said Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, who said that in addition to the economic pressures for a longer American school year, there is pressure from parents.
"Such a large percentage of children go home to empty homes that schools are already adding afternoon and summer programs to help working parents," he said.
Already, 1,699 schools - almost all located west of the Mississippi - have reorganized their calendars to eliminate what Ballinger's group calls the "long summer of forgetting." These schools cut summer vacation in half, spreading days off throughout the year. A dozen of these schools also operate on a 200- to 220-day school year. Many of the others are awaiting funding to expand theirs.
"The cost factor is the big hurdle," said John Ellis, New Jersey's education commissioner, who plans to begin a pilot program later this year to add six weeks to the school year. By the year 2000, Ellis hopes to have all students in school for 210 days.
Cost estimates for a longer school year vary wildly. Some put it as high as $1 billion for every extra school day for the nation's 40 million public schoolchildren.
Others, like James Bradford, ridicule those estimates that are based on current daily costs.
Bradford, superintendent of Buena Vista City Schools in Buena Vista, Va., has been running an extended school year at Parry McCluer High School since 1973. Last year, 63 percent of the students took advantage of the pioneering 217-day program.
"I think it costs more not to have a longer school year," he said.
The way Bradford figures, the classrooms, administrative staff, maintenance workers, textbooks, teachers' benefits, and insurance cost the same no matter how many days students are in school. What does cost more are higher teacher salaries, heftier utility fees and more gas money for buses. That works out to just over $200 per student for the extra six weeks. He pays for it with the school's remedial money, a special state grant and tuition charged to students from other districts.
Because fewer students have to repeat the year and juvenile delinquency problems caused by idle summers are averted, he says the district saves money. At the same time, the dropout rate has decreased, test scores have increased, and the percentage of students attending college has doubled.
by CNB