Well I definately do NOT believe in longer school days.  My children are already gone from 7:20am-4:00pm M-F (includes bus riding time).  That is just not going to fly with me.

Secondly, I think a shorter school day would work better with year round school.  Perhaps even shortened to 4 day school weeks instead of 5.

If longer days ever comes up as a bill and passes, my kids are getting homeschooled...

Don't know about the US but in the UK teachers have about 3 months off a year so they would probably moan about the extra work, other than that, whilst i don't know about the US education system, I seem to recall bunking off at every opportunity did you do the same? and do you think it made any difference. School gives you a good grasp but if you want to, further education, Uni etc is by choice where you "will"learn more because it is your choice.

The Wisconsin Teacher's Union (WEAC) sued my son's (then) cyber school several years ago.  They did everything they could to shut it down.  WEAC was suing to eliminate it's own member's jobs!  The school was a virtual public school staffed by dues-paying member teachers and administrators.

Their reasoning?  They didn't feel parents were morally fit to teach their own children - they said this in open court.  Since the child wasn't in a brick and mortar school supervised by dues-paying members for most of the day, they didn't have a right to educational choice.

My view on this is that if teachers want to be treated and viewed as professionals rather than tradesmen, they should get rid of their union that speaks for them as a trade union.

A "kid's" point of view? Yeah I'm in my last year of high school but I still gotta think about my friends that are left behind for 1, 3, if not 4 or more years. The average school day is like this:

6:20-roll(litterally) out of bed
6:50-get on bus
7:57-finally reach school
8:05 to 3:00-classes
3:45-finally get home(regular day) or 5:00-finally get home(practice day)

This is with 4 minutes inbetween classes and a 20 minute lunch time, no recess. Then when that's all done I do what ever home work I have, eat dinner, get ready for the next day, practice by myself if I feel the need(I'm a rifle in colorguard if anyone is wondering), try to have a social life with some friends, check my writing site, CH.com, and the weather, talk to my boyfriend from 9 to 10, and then finally collapse into bed at 10:30 wondering if it's Friday yet. That's the typical week day for me. I do one sport and I have friends that do 3. Every other Saturday, I work for my grandfather and try to catch up on the sleep I don't get. Half my friends have part time if not full time jobs after school. All this and not to mention try to spend time with my friends/boyfriend, get my licence, or whatever else that life demands I do on the weekends or after school. Ok we don't have time to squeeze in any more hours of a school day! We're there long enough as is! People complain that kids today are over weight but after school, we're drained! Sitting on our butts and doing nothing is a treat. Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining but this kind of irriates me. Just because we're a little behind compared to the other nations, doesn't mean you have to take what freedom we have away. Just my opinion. Take it for what you will.

Broken

Sounds like going to work to me but at least when you're working its hopefully by choice and if you stick at it may'be your dreams will come true.
Colin

This is a subject that I've long been a proponent of changing. We ARE behind the rest of the world in education and our system is BROKEN. We have teachers who are not compentent to be teaching our kids (and NOT all teachers are incompentent, but we have a lot who are and should NOT be teaching and I agree with the president that they should be doing something else).

But he said something that makes a lot of sense also - the government can't turn off the TV at home - that's up to the parents, so it's going to take an effort on everyone's part to educate our kids.

As to the longer days. When I was a kid - we went from 8:15 till 3:45 and still had time for everything else we needed to do. We started after Labor day and ended the first of June. We had two weeks off at Christmas and a couple of days off at Thanksgiving and a couple of days off at Easter. Other than that we went to school - no week Spring break or any other holidays. Very few STATE or FEDERAL mandated tests (think we had an IQ test once every few years or something). Our teachers KNEW if we could read or write and what we were learning.

ONE teacher tended to the classroom and WE knew if we didn't behave it was going to be WORSE when we got home. We didn't need the government mandating WHAT the teacher could do to us or what our PARENTS could do to us when we got home. AND we LEARNED!

We also had circurculum (sp) like READING, WRITING, and "RITMATIC and NOT sex ed, drug ed and all that other marlarkey that the damn government mandates now. But we also had a flag raising each morning BEFORE school and learned flag protocol and respect for our flag and a love for our country. We still know the words to our school song and can still sing it with a lump in our throat.

The whole education system in this country needs to be rethunk! It's going to take government, teachers and parents working together to get it back on the right track. We need to put some basic CORE courses back into the schools, parents need to get involved and the government needs to take a back seat to most of it. Teachers need to get control of classrooms and kids need to learn that they're not IN CHARGE anymore.

But it's not going to happen overnight -- WE'VE let it get out of hand.

Hugs BD