The perennial reform: Fixing school time

Phi Delta Kappan

Volumn 90, Issue 4, 2008, Pages 240-250

  Cuban, Larry ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 70450178609     PISSN: 00317217     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/003172170809000404     Document Type: Article

References (35)

1. I wish to thank Selma Wassermann for her most helpful comments and suggestions on the penultimate draft and Bruce Smith for inviting me to do this special report.
2. National Commission on Excellence in Education, A Nation at Risk (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983); National Education Commission on Time and Learning, Prisoners of Time (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1994); New Commission on the Skills of the American Work Force, Tough Times or Tough Choices (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006).
3. David Berliner, "What's All the Fuss About Instructional Time?" in Miriam Ben-Peretz and Rainer Bromme, eds., The Nature of Time in Schools: Theoretical Concepts, Practitioner Perceptions (New York: Teachers College Press, 1990).
4. See, for example, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, "E-Learning Policy Implications for K-12 Educators and Decision Makers," 2001, www.ncrel.org/policy/pubs/html/pivol11/apr2002d. htm.
5. Strong American Schools, A Stagnant Nation: Why American Students Are Still at Risk (Washington, D.C., 2008), pp. 3-4.
6. Joel Weiss and Robert Brown, "Telling Tales Over Time: Constructing and Deconstructing the School Calendar," Teachers College Record, 2003, pp. 1720-57;
7. Shaun P. Johnson and Terry E. Spradlin, "Alternatives to the Traditional School-Year Calendar," Education Policy Brief, Center for Evaluation & Education Policy, Spring 2007, p. 3; for a de scription of the "Gary Plan" of year-round schooling, see Ronald Cohen, Children of the Mill: Schooling and Society in Gary, Indiana, 1906-1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).
8. Robert Canady and Michael Rettig, Block Scheduling: A Catalyst for Change in High Schools (Larchmont, N.Y.: Eye on Education, 1995); personal communication from Michael Rettig, 28 April 2008.
9. Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, "38th Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2006;
10. Sarah Huyvaert, Time Is of the Essence: Learning in School (Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1998), pp. 59-67; for KIPP, see: www.kipp.org/01/whatisakippschool.cfm.
11. Ivan Illich, Deschooling Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
12. For a politically conservative view on home schooling and its history, see Isabel Lyman, "Home Schooling: Back to the Future?" Cato Institute Policy Analysis No. 294, 7 January 1998, www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-294.html. Beginning nearly a decade ago, state- and district-funded cyber schools, such as Florida Virtual School, provide courses for homeschoolers, parents who want more learning options for their children, and students in isolated rural areas who lack access to advanced high school courses. Florida Virtual School served over 50,000 students in 2006-07 and expects to reach 100,000 in 2009. See www.flvs.net.
13. For predictions from the 1990s and current ones for distance learning and students' use of the Internet, see "Predictions Database" in Elon University's "Imagining the Internet," www.elon.edu/predictions/q13.aspx.
14. For an astute analysis of distance learning, see Clayton M. Christensen and Michael B. Horn, "How Do We Transform Our Schools?" Education Next, Summer 2008, www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18575969.html.
15. For the 2003 figure on home-schooled children, see "Fast Facts" from National Center for Education Statistics, http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=65.
16. The Minnesota example comes from Elena Silva, "On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time," Education Sector Reports, January 2007, p. 8;
17. for cost savings in year-round schools, see Nasser Daneshvary and Terrence M. Clauretie, "Efficiency and Costs in Education: Year-Round Versus Traditional Schedules," Economics of Education Review, 2001, pp. 279-87.
18. Shaun P. Johnson and Terry E. Spradlin, On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time," Education Sector Reports, January, p. 5;
19. Harris Cooper, et. al., "The Effects of Modified School Calendars on Student Achievement and on School and Community Attitudes," Review of Educational Research, Spring 2003, pp. 1-52.
20. Bill Gates, "What Is Wrong with America's High Schools?" Los Angeles Times, 3 March 2005, p. B11.
21. One of the better summaries of how schools had become the central problem to the future of the nation in the 1980s can be found in Chester E. Finn, Jr, We Must Take Charge: Our Schools and Our Future (New York: Free Press, 1991); also see Diane Ravitch, "The Test of Time," Education Next, Spring 2003, www.educationnext.org/20032/32.html; and, in the same issue, see a reprint of Albert Shanker's retrospective (9 May 1993) on A Nation at Risk report. For analyses of other countries compared to the U.S., see Norton Grubb and Marvin Lazerson, The Education Gospel: The Economic Power of Schooling (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), pp. 170-72.
22. John Goodlad, A Place Called School (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984);
23. David Labaree, "Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle over Educational Goals," American Educational Research Journal, Spring 1997, pp. 39-81.
24. Lowell C. Rose and Alec M. Gallup, "The 32nd Annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll of the Public's Attitudes Toward the Public Schools," Phi Delta Kappan, September 2000, p. 47.
25. There are other personal values, such as honesty, trustworthiness, etc., that are highly prized and reinforced by teachers and school policies, but I will focus on the obvious societal values embedded in the structures and processes of tax-supported schooling. See Robert Dreeben, On What Is Learned in School (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1968);
26. Steven Brint, Mary C. Contreras, and Michael T. Matthews, "Socialization Messages in Primary Schools: An Organizational Analysis," Sociology of Education, July 2001, pp. 157-80;
27. Philip Jackson, Life in Classrooms (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968).
28. For examples of the pejorative use of "factory-like schools," see, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life (New York: Basic Books, 1976);
29. Joel Spring, "Education as a Form of Social Control," in Clarence Karier, Paul Violas, and Joel Spring, eds., Roots of Crisis: American Education in the 20th Century (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1973), pp. 30-39.
30. Quote cited in Raymond Callahan, Education and the Cult of Efficiency (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 152. It comes from Stanford Professor Ellwood P. Cubberley in his textbook, Public School Administration, written in 1916.
31. David L. Angus, Jeffrey E. Mirel, and Maris A. Vinovskis, "Historical Development of Age-Stratification in Schooling," Teachers College Record, Winter 1988, pp. 211-36.
32. David B. Tyack, The One Best System: A History of American Urban Education (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974), p. 43.
33. Marty Swaim and Stephen Swaim, Teacher Time: Why Teacher Workload and School Management Matter to Each Student in Our Public Schools (Arlington, Va.: Redbud Books, 1999);
34. Claudia Meek, "Classroom Crisis: It's About Time," Phi Delta Kappan, April 2003, pp. 592-95;and National Center for Education Statistics, Time Spent Teaching Core Academic Subjects in Elementary Schools (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics, 1997).
35. Although aware of anxiety-stressed teenagers, I was surprised by an article that described students in an affluent high school being required to eat lunch because they skipped eating in order to take another Advanced Placement class. See Winnie Hu, Too Busy to Eat, Students Get a New Required Course: Lunch," New York Times, 24 May 2008, pp. A1-A11.