I have not yet met a person who does not have an opinion on the length of a school year. By and large, most people who are not students, parents of students, in the business of school or reliant upon child labor don’t care and “I don’t care” is an opinion. The remainder, a minority of our community – parents, grandparents, employers and others whose daily life is touched by school – form their opinion from their personal experience, their self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling. Normally, this blog sets a proposition, examines what we know and think about the topic, and creates an action or To Do with a rationale. Today, I will start with the conclusion.
The Big Duh
A school year must be the length of time necessary to teach and cause children to become competent in an annual curriculum. It need not be longer nor shorter than that, but it must be long enough to teach an annual curriculum.
What Do We Know?
Over time educators have packaged learning into grade levels and content courses and courses of study and each package is an annual curriculum. Elementary school is parsed into 4K or pre-kindergarten, Kindergarten, and 1st grade through the last grade of your school’s organization, typically 5th or 6th grade. Each grade level is a step on a curricular scaffold building a child’s knowledge, skills and dispositions about learning school year by school year. Secondary school is parsed into content courses of English/language arts, math, science and socials studies and perhaps a world language. These are stacked or sequenced, as in English 7 through English 12 and Algebra through Calculus. Some content courses seem to be stand alone courses, like Marketing or Personal Finance, but have underlying content and skill structure in English, social studies, and math. Also, secondary school instruction provides continuous courses of study in music, the arts, and technical education. Year after year of instruction in choir, band and orchestra or in painting and ceramics or technical training refines and improves student performance.
The packaging in terms of time began when our communities were agriculture-based and children could attend school when not needed during the planting, growing, and harvesting seasons. Packaging was reconsidered when child labor laws were implemented and regular schooling replaced daily work. A school day mirrored a work day and a school week mirrored a world week and school calendaring filled the community need for day care for millions of children nationwide.
Curricular packaging has been refined and fit into grade level and course competencies. A child’s progress through the 3 R’s was a pathway up the scaffold of reading, writing and arithmetic. At one time, a 6th grade education or the ability to read, write and cipher at the 6th grade level was an adequate adult competency. Later, the level of competency advanced to 8th grade and children could stop attending school after completion of 8th grade or the age of 16. That was good enough. Today, high school is the completion of 13 or 14 years of schooling and a generalized competency of 10th grade or better.
Our contemporary school scaffold is a child’s annual demonstrated competence on annual curricula that validates promotion to the next annual curricula and eventually graduation. The time required to complete each step of the scaffold or each packaged curriculum is approximately 180 school days or 36 weeks of school.
There are no prizes or awards for schools that have shorter or longer school years. There is no economic incentive to add days to a school year. School revenues and contracts for all school employees are a set amount in a school’s annual budget and decreasing or extending a school year does not alter these major expenses.
Why Is This Thus?
Why is 180 days the seemingly standard for a school year? The question was asked and answered more than 100 years ago. The world’s richest man of his time, Andrew Carnegie, was committed to the role of education as the essential strategy for improving life in the early 1900s. In 1906, he funded the Carnegie Foundation led by Harvard President Charles Elliot to study and recommend standards for a college education. At the time, the national college graduation rate was less than 10% and the quality of a college education was dependent upon the college. There were no national standards for education. The Carnegie Foundation literally defined college and university education in the United States for the next century.
The Foundation also recommended changes in public education. For our purposes, the Foundation defined a high school Carnegie Unit as a (one) credit awarded for completion of 120 hours of instruction over the length of a school year. A school year, then, is the length of time to required to achieve 120 hours of instruction plus assessments plus other school requirements. According to the Carnegie plan, a high school student could earn six to seven credits per year and 24 to 28 credits over four years and high school graduation became the completion of 24-28 credits.
Using the 120 hours of instruction as the standard for an annual curriculum and allowing for reteaching and make-up lessons for students absent from school and for the additional legislative mandates that must be accomplished in a school year, 180 days became the normal length of a school year in US public schools. Ninety days was a semester and 45 days was a quarter or grading period.
Since 1906, much as changed in the field of teaching and learning, yet the basics of a Carnegie Unit and the standards for a school year have remained largely unchanged. A discussion of a school year begins with 180 days.
We must always be aware of the influences of money and politics in public, as these are constantly at play in public education. By rule of the US Constitution, the responsibility for public education is delegated to the states. Hence, the funding and rules related to public education are legislated by state government.
It is honest to state that state funding for public education is allocated according to money available not by money needed. This basic understanding tells us that legislatures with a need to fund many state programs that compete for a limited annual state budget are always looking for ways to reduce or contain costs. Public education, prisons and highways are the three largest expenses in state budgets.
The school year is an example of such manipulation. For decades, a school year was 180 days of instruction. First, start with this as the number of interest: 180 times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the largest cost of a school year. More than 80% of school costs are paid in salary and benefits to employees. If school funding is considered on a per day basis not a per year basis and a school year is defined by hours instead of days, then the total sum of money spent for salaries and benefits can be changed. Second, change the number of interest to: hours of instruction times the salaries and benefits of school employees is the cost of a school year. The total remains the same as long as the hours of instruction equal 180 days of instruction.
In Wisconsin, 437 hours of instruction are required for Kindergarten students, 1,050 hours for grades 1 through 6, and 1,137 for grades 7 through 12.
Third, allow schools to determine the length of class periods and the number of hours in a school day so that each grade level meets the legislated number of instruction hours. Now, a school year can be less than 180 days. More importantly, the cost of school is reduced by each day of salary and benefit that is removed from the annual school calendar.
Politics and economics not student learning drive the contemporary defining of a school year. Today, a school year can be reduced to the bare minimum of days required to complete mandated hours of instruction, a number in the 170s.
Yes but! If we add the concept of educational accountability to the definition of a school year, how much teaching and learning is required for a child to competently complete an annual grade level, a content course or a course of study? There is no magic in the Carnegie Unit. Critics of the Unit have harped for decades on its arbitrariness. Yet, the idea that the completion of a rigorous course of instruction should be the basis of how we “package” a year of school keeps us returning to the idea of the Unit. A school year must be accountable for learning not just time in class.
To Do
Accountability for learning matters and competency is the metric of measure. The number of hours in a school day or in a school year is just the vehicle for achieving competent learning. School Boards approve and adopt annual curricula for all children in all grade levels and courses with the intention that children will successfully and competently complete each. We must honor this element of local school control of public education.
We have a national problem with proficiency. A majority of children do not meet proficiency standards on local, state and national assessments. This is an instructional challenge. We must improve the instructional tool box used by all teachers to more effectively cause every child to learn. This is a commitment challenge. We must hold to the goals of annual student achievement and invoke what we know about the science and art of explicit teaching and the necessity for instructional interventions when initial instruction is not successful. Proficiency is created when a child is competent in each curricular unit of instruction so that at the end of a school year there is a sequence of proficient learning. We must intervene at the point of mislearning or non-learning not at the end of school year. And, to point, reducing the number of days in a school year contradicts what we know about student proficiency. Teachers need all the time they can have with children not less.
Take Away
As a School Board member, I hear from parents who want to reduce the length of our school year. I return to the first paragraph. Most who have an opinion about the length of a school year base their opinion upon personal experience, self-interest, and an uninformed concept of schooling. A Board member’s responsibility includes educating the public about education and local education, in particular. As an educator who is a Board member, my first accountability is to causing every child to become a proficient learner and to learn. In the business of causing learning, instructional time is our most valuable resource. We can improve teaching skills and refine curriculum. However, without adequate time for all of the layers of instruction, initial through necessary interventions, to be successfully deployed, teacher skill and engaging curricula will not cause the educational outcomes children need. A school year may be an arbitrary number of hours and days, yet there is a substantial rationale connecting instructional time with learning accountability. At the end of conversation, we get what we settle for and less time will result in less learning.