Do our students need a longer school day and school year?

I think that children, especially young children, would not be able to tolerate a longer school day. We need to learn to maximize the time we have with the students to promote meaningful and optimized learning opportunities.

I think a longer school day would be appropriate if we provide more opportunities for the students to have breaks, and physical activity between class sessions.  Our school tries to feed almost 600 students in a half hour at lunch.  Ridiculous!

 45 minutes with attendance, etc. is not enough to get kids engaged. Longer class times would be helpful. I also think that kids who are in high school would benefit from a day where they don't need to be in class before 8:30-9AM. They need their sleep at that age! They will learn better if they get their sleep. Of course, then the school day would need to go until around 4PM, but wouldn't that be better aligned with the regular work days of their parents which would leave less after school time to get into trouble?... just a thought.

   I have been an advocate of a 200 day school year since I came into teaching in 1992.  We need to limit the amount of time off between the end of one school year and the beginning the the next school year.  By having a bit longer vacation time during the year and extending to 200 days for the year we could eliminate the amount of time needed for reteaching in the Fall. It used to be the cost of Air Conditioning was used as the reason it was not cost effective to go to 200 days.  The other major impediment is the cry of "kids need the summers off!"  No, they need to be learning.  There really is no excuse anymore.

 School day?  Really?  This is the best topic you could come up with?  So, people can't learn anything outside of a classroom?  These superficial topics don't do anything to actually improve learning.  

 A longer school day would be beneficial. Many teachers I know of always complain there is not enough time during a school day. Many of our schools in the area get out between 1 and 2. Many of us remember going to school til three. One teacher friend keeps her students with parent permission for an extra hour each day without pay. She takes this hour to teach science and social studies. These are two subjects that are suffering in many classrooms due to time restraints. Longer days could also provide a time where students can go make choices to learn things of interest. It does not always have to be all academic. The time could be catered for other items such as the arts or sports.

I would LOVE to teach for at least 1/2 hour longer every day.  There simply isn't enough time to teach things to mastery.  We're teaching "an inch deep and a mile wide" and not developing crticial thinking skills and real-world problem solving skills.  Teaching in a low-income area, having a longer school day would greatly help families who now have to pay for after-school care.  Our nation has bought into the idea that children need "time to be children"...thus having short school days and WAY too much vacation time.  True, but if we don't do a better job educating them, they will think, work, and act like children far into their adulthood.

I am a parent of a third grader in the Cobb County School District in Georgia. This is a subject that is always up for debate and discussion for the next school year - whether or not to shorten the school year. Currently our year is 177 days, down one day from last year. The year before last they tried adding two additional week long breaks in, parents overwhelmingly turned that down.

I am in the process of constructing a paper on this very topic for one of my master's courses and would love to get some feedback. I am arguing the disadvantages of shortening the school year and or adding more breaks and the hardship placed on the students and parents. I would love to get some feedback on this issue from parents, students, and teachers.

I understand that budgets are tight for most school districts however it is a known fact that most governmental expendature guidelines, (including education) are archaic and redundant, and therefore not cost effective.