When Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago, he had one big idea to reform the schools and increase student achievement: a longer school day. His model, writes Mike Klonsky, was Houston. Rahm claimed that students in Houston got a total of three more years of instruction because of the longer school day.
But what’s this?, asks Mike. The wealthy suburban districts outside Chicago are shortening their school day.
“The plan aims to reduce stress and let students get more sleep for the students who attend schools in six suburbs. The plan also proposes to ease up on the amount of homework.
“We’ve come to the decision that our kids are more than a standardized test score. We want them to be well rounded global citizens who can contribute in a meaningful way,” said District 214 Superintendent David Schuler. — ABC7 News”
Maybe Rahm’s model should be the suburbs, not Houston.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Please tell me public schools are not calling CPS for unpaid lunches.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2016/05/12/englewood-school-lunches/
I cannot find this on a charter list, therefore public???
This part sounds ‘charter’ – “There are no systems in place here. As a new superintendent, we have a new business administrator, we have new systems in place so that things work much more efficiently,” Kravitz said.
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Both the comments of Roland Fryer, about his kids in the wealthy suburbs vs.testing everyday, for the other kids, and, Emanuel’s statements, make it impossible for me to conclude anything other than that, they want to grind down the poor. The feudalism of the past, is being brought into the present- the result of the concentration of wealth’s strangulation of the economy.
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“Alicia’s daughter came to Texas two years ago and began third grade in HISD. Since then, she has not conducted a single science experiment, has never had a social studies lesson and has been assigned one book to read in class. Instead Alicia’s daughter has taken 75 practice STAAR tests and has completed approximately 1,200 STAAR prep worksheets.”
Look on the bright side. She’s developing “grit”.
I don’t know but I think assessment will ramp up when the testing is all online- “embedded”. They can test them every 20 or 30 minutes, individually, and machine score the responses immediately. That’s how they do it for lower wage entry level jobs now in various industries. 70% correct responses and you’ve “received training”!
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District 214 has plenty of ‘free lunch’ students in it, it is not all rich kids. I’ve subbed in this district and one school had over 10 different language specialists to meet their very diverse student’s needs. The difference between CPS and the suburbs is that the board is elected. They know the students in their district, they represent the people in the district. Their goal is to create schools that are good for their children and their community…not make money for the city and the ‘City’s’ friends…like CPS.
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“Rahms Away”
Longer day
And lower pay
Rahmbo’s way
Is power play
Shorter day
And big “Hooray!”
People say
“Get Rahms away”
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“We want them to be well rounded global citizens who can contribute in a meaningful way,”
What if the students don’t want that for themselves?? Whatever the hell a “well rounded global citizen” is??? And whatever “contribute in a meaningful way” means??? Reads like a do-gooder know it all thought.
Back to that most fundamental question of all: What is the purpose of public education? And where can the mandate be found? (it ain’t that statement above)
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Perhaps you would you prefer “flat” global citizens to “well-rounded” ones? like Thomas Friedman does?
“Better fat than flat”
Is what I say to that
“Better round than ground”
That is what I’ve found
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The way the longer day was structured meant that very little additional time would be actually used for instruction, minutes per class, not a significant difference in practical terms. Rahm and CPS didn’t want to pay for the additional time added to teachers workday outside of the contract, because “work for free” is fine because it’s “for the kids”? Stepping back, when you look at the CPS testing schedule, it seems far more likely that the longer day was meant to offset, in its own useless way, the amount of instructional time lost to the large number of mandated tests the kids had to be presented with. The basic misconception of this harkens back to waiting for superman, where education was depicted as teachers opening up the top of kids heads and pouring in the product, hence more pouring time means more product delivered, as if education was only ever about content delivery. Reformers are arm chair quarterbacks who can’t tell the difference between a football and a can of spam: since both are pork products the reformers think they must both work the same way on the field.
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