School year gets much longer for students in pilot program

Thousands of public school students will soon be spending a lot more time in the classroom.

Five states Monday announced plans to add at least 300 hours of learning time to the calendar starting next year.

The federal pilot program in New York, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Tennessee affects about 20,000 students.

The goal is to boost student achievement and make U.S. schools more competitive on a global level. But it’s not clear yet whether school days will be longer or more days will be added.

“Kids in most other countries, certainly the countries that do better than we do, are spending more time in school, more time learning, more quality time or as educators like to say ‘time on task,'” Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education for Massachusetts Schools told CBS News.

The current U.S. public school year requires 180 days. But Chester argued too many are lost to field trips, school assemblies, and in-service training for teachers.

In Japan, by contrast, there’s a minimum of 210 calendar days of classroom instruction, including half days on Saturdays. Schools also have the option of adding even more time.

“It’s about more time for teachers to plan and to visualize instruction and it’s about providing students with richer curriculums, not just the core academics,” Chester said.

Similar proposals in Washington state have been shot down, primarily by teachers unions who oppose the additional work without additional pay.

In a discussion on <"http://kiroradio.com/category/smn/" >Seattle’s Morning News, host John Curley was lukewarm on the effectiveness of the idea.

“It all gets down to parent involvement,” Curley said. “If the parents are involved, the kids are going to do well. If the parents don’t care the kids won’t care.”

“Whether educators have more time to enrich instruction or students have more time to learn how to play an instrument and write computer code, adding meaningful in-school hours is a critical investment that better prepares children to be successful in the 21st century,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement.

The project comes as educators across the U.S. struggle to identify the best ways to strengthen a public education system that many fear has fallen behind other nations. Student testing, teacher evaluations, charter schools and voucher programs join longer school days on the list of reforms that have been put forward with varying degrees of success.

A report from the National Center on Time and Learning, which advocates for extending instruction time, cites research suggesting students who spend more hours learning perform better.

A study from Harvard economist Roland Fryer argues that of all the factors affecting educational outcomes, two are the best predictors of success: intensive tutoring and adding at least 300 hours to the standard school calendar.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.