Why 180 Days Aren't Enough

By SAM ALLIS/NEW ORLEANS

All across the U.S., kids are trooping back to school, but for youngsters at the Robert Russa Moton and Johnson C. Lockett elementary schools in New Orleans, summer ended on July 10. On that date, the 1,450 youngsters returned for the third year of an experimental program that adds 40 extra days to the usual 180-day school year. They were breaking a long-standing American tradition of summer vacations -- dating back to a time when family labor was vital to the late-summer harvest -- that give the U.S. one of the shortest school years in the industrialized world. There is surely a connection, a growing number of reformers argue, between that distinction and the dismal academic performances of American students, compared with their peers elsewhere.

Increasingly, many of those critics urge that what is good for the kids at Moton and Lockett might be good for the entire U.S.: an extended academic year for everybody. The case for that radical change, says Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, is "absolutely compelling." It also seems perfectly in keeping with President George Bush's highly touted goal of making U.S. students first in the world in mathematics and science by the year 2000 -- even though Bush did not mention lengthening the school year in the education plan he unveiled last April.

A growing number of ordinary Americans, however, support the idea. The Gallup Organization, which has been polling on the subject since 1958, found last week for the first time that a majority (51%) of its sample favored a longer year. "If I spend more time at the piano, I get better at it," argues Dwight McKenna, the New Orleans school-board member who initiated the Moton and Lockett experiment.

The case for the longer school year is particularly acute in the inner cities, where family ties are weak, at-home support for education is often minimal and dropout rates are high. Summertime spent on the hot ghetto streets is hardly as culturally enriching as the time middle-class students devote to camps, exotic vacations and highly organized sports. Moton and Lockett, for example, are located near New Orleans' notorious Florida and Desire housing projects, where children sometimes skip rope within the sound of gunfire. "This has nothing to do with competition with the Japanese and everything to do with urban reality," says McKenna. "This is eight hours when the drug addicts can't get at these kids."

Teachers get them instead. Attired in trim khaki-and-white uniforms, Moton youngsters between the ages of four and 11 work through reading and mathematics exercises and then at recess stampede out of the air-conditioned, cinder-block building to become blurs in the steamy 100 degrees heat. They are candid about their options. "If I was home, I'd just sit around," says fifth-grader Alkima Thomas.

So far, the educational results of the New Orleans experiment are mixed. Teachers at Moton and Lockett find that the extra-long year at a minimum gives them a head start on the traditional weeks of review work at the beginning of the new school term. "Come September, I'm ready to get into the meat of reading," says Juanita Smith, a second-grade teacher at Lockett. "Normally, I can't do that until the end of October." But students at both schools test far below the state average in reading, and their scores since the 220-day year began have improved only marginally. "My kids can't read the way they ought to," says Ellenese Brooks-Simms, the principal of Moton school. Brooks- Simms and her counterpart at Lockett, Wilbert Dunn, are trying to put even more emphasis on reading instruction by cutting time spent on gym, music and other activities.

The major obstacle to the extended year in New Orleans, as it is across the country, is money. The Moton and Lockett experiment cost about $870,000 last year. More than $500,000 came from the Federal Government, while the school board anted up the remainder. But the future of the program after this year is dim because the board claims it can no longer afford to contribute its share. Thus far, there have been no appeals to the private sector for funding to continue the project. Financially hard-pressed state and local governments across the U.S. would find it extremely tough to assume the burden of such a program. In California, for example, a move to a 220-day program from kindergarten through high school would cost $121 million a day, according to Charles Ballinger, executive director of the National Association for Year- Round Education.

But most parents at Moton and Lockett strongly support the longer school session and worry about a return to the old system. "My kids are learning more, and I know they're safe," says Dwan Greene, who has two children at Moton. Even the kids appear enthusiastic about days spent near a teacher instead of a television set. Teachers at the two schools also seem pleased, despite the extra work. Among other things, they like the additional money they earn, which is prorated into their regular salaries.

The glowing recommendations for a wider adoption of the longer school year are based on the premise that the added time would in all cases be put to good use. This assumes a lot. Many inner-city schools labor under appalling conditions that produce poor education and endless disciplinary problems. "More of the same isn't any better if the same isn't good enough to begin with," says Norman Morgan, whose Polk County, N.C., school board in 1985 stopped an experimental program that had suddenly lifted the school year from 180 days to 200. Lockett principal Dunn agrees, "The simple fact of more time spent on tasks does not change anything. It must be coupled with something extra."

Even with that caveat, it is clear that the time for a hard look at the longer school year has come. "It's a litmus test on how serious we are about - education," says the Carnegie Foundation's Boyer. The state of Oregon evidently agrees: a comprehensive education bill enacted in July will add 40 days to the school year over the next two decades. Both President Bush and corporate America would also do well to support the change, at least on an experimental basis. The summertime harvest that America needs to reap these days is not down on the farm, but up in the mind.

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CREDIT: [TMFONT 1 d #666666 d {Source: Education Commission of the States}]CAPTION: PUTTING IN THE SCHOOL DAYS