Makeda, Tulsa (11/17/2009 10:53:32 AM)

Yes, keep them in school longer, we are doing so poorly, it is time to try something new.

imightbewrong, tulsa (11/17/2009 11:06:34 AM)

You can keep them at school for 18 hours a day 365 days out of the year and it will be the SAME. Nothing will change until PARENTS become involved and set aside time to work with their children. Stop blaming the schools and start putting the blame where it belongs.....on the lazy, worthless, uneducated, welfare mooching nothings!!!!!! What is the government going to do next, make fat people stay in a gym for an extra hour a day???? Got a secret on that too.....they will still be fat because they do not want to change. I remember a time when we actually believed that we should be RESPONSIBLE FOR OURSELVES and that it was nobody's fault but our own if we failed. Now everyone wants to blame everyone else.......wake up and take ownership!!!!

imightbewrong, tulsa (11/17/2009 11:08:19 AM)

If you take offense to my comment, it is not my fault. Blame the school I attended for making me a free thinker. Bad school, bad.

CEE, (11/17/2009 11:19:44 AM)

If the proposal is to add 300 hours over 175 attendance days then it seems unrealistic. The alternative is the addition of instructional days.

The big question is how this will be paid for given the current budget problems where the available funding cannot adequately support the current level of instruction

Mar, Tulsa (11/17/2009 11:24:30 AM)

I agree with the comments about.

michael andrew, pryor (11/17/2009 11:25:35 AM)

imightbewrong,
you is right on this one!
well said and i couldnt agree more!
just to add another tidbit to think about....
wasnt the lottery supposed to fix the education system in oklahoma?
the wizard in okc sure touted it as the fix all to the current woes of the system!

wk, (11/17/2009 11:28:31 AM)

If you don't do the time, you'll probably do the crime.???

lucky girl, mine (11/17/2009 11:35:06 AM)

imightbewrong, you are so right....tulsa public schools education at it's finest.

michael andrew is really a wizard in okc? I thought they were in OZ?

What the ?, Tulsa (11/17/2009 11:39:15 AM)

Middle school teachers will need to be paid for the extra hours.

schcounselor, (11/17/2009 11:57:56 AM)

i agree with imighbewrong. And as far as the lottery fixing education. It was supposed to be a help education. It still could if they wouldn't take away the funds that are supposed to be in place and replace it with the lottery. The lottery funds hsould be an additive not an essential part of the funding to make ends meet. It's kind of like every other state funding project...If the state kept the money where it is intended we would have better roads, bridges, etc.

DBJohn, Tulsa (11/17/2009 12:04:00 PM)

I can't agree more, there is a definite need for parental involvement.

JAX, (11/17/2009 12:04:26 PM)

Michael Andrew
The state lottery fixed the education just as making liquor by the drink,legal, to fixed the
illegal booze problem...

Ryanoceros, Tulsa (11/17/2009 12:08:24 PM)

We don't need no edjumacation, Obama is gunna give us money!

lesandefur, Hartshorne (11/17/2009 12:10:42 PM)

Does each school district or the State Department of Education have a mechanism to track just how much time students spend outside of academics on extracurricular activities? I do support athletics, FFA, Music, etc; however, I feel parents and concerned citizens would be surprised to see just how much time is spent on activities not academic in nature. Same could be said for the amount of time students are exposed to substitute teachers (often just glorified babysitters. Just a thought for parents and school boards to ponder.

inthebackground, (11/17/2009 12:10:48 PM)

With short falls in money now where are they going to get this extry money cant rehire teachers next year and now they want to make school time longer what a joke this school board is becoming.there like some little kid that walks in a candy store they want what ever they can get at one time if its good or not and this is not good for our kids here in Oklahoma.

parksport, (11/17/2009 12:11:53 PM)

I agree that keeping students in classrooms for longer amounts of time will not necessarily result in academic improvements, and also that parents really do need to step up their roles in both supporting and being actively involved in their child’s education. The reality of the educational budget funding being able to even meet current items is less then grim, much less the prospect of it covering extended hours. I hope the community forum with representatives from the National Center on Time and Learning provides insights into realistic solutions and not a bunch of “in a perfect world” dreaming.

LocalBoy, B.A. (11/17/2009 12:24:53 PM)

I'm at a loss for how to get better parent involvment. You are either a good parent or not. I have been horrified at the number of people that have commented in these pages in reposne to articles on truancy and similar things where people just say "they're teenagers, you can't make them do something" or "you can't control them." That leaves me *almost* speechless. How and why did these people get to be parents? Pure bilogical urges? Unbelieveable that people think they can just expect teenagers to make all of their own decisions and that they can not be supervised and guided effectively.

This is why some of our schools are just outright scary places. and adding hours is not going to change these kind of things.

LocalBoy, B.A. (11/17/2009 12:26:37 PM)

Apologies for not checking my spelling prior to posting... and in a comment on education... Unbelievable...

schcounselor, (11/17/2009 12:30:58 PM)

I think they should take out athletics as part of the school day. It should be afterschool, so core classes can be longer if needed, but the whole school day will focus on Academics only.

parksport, (11/17/2009 12:34:26 PM)

Edit note: In a previous post, I had written "less then grim" when I had actually meant “very grim”. I need to stop skipping my grammar homework.

parksport, (11/17/2009 12:35:16 PM)

I feel your pain, LocalBoy

hootie, Tulsa (11/17/2009 12:35:16 PM)

The US needs to go to a year round school system like in Western Europe. Students in Europe learn more, retain more and stay out of trouble.

DBJohn, Tulsa (11/17/2009 12:37:53 PM)

Local boy I do understand why your speechless. I simple don't understand the attitudes of the parents on discipline. They have all sorts of excuses other than simpling saying I can't be bothered with my kid. They are usually the ones who are first to chastise the educator and/or the school if they make any attempt to make their kid follow the rules.

VoteNo, Tulsa (11/17/2009 12:56:31 PM)

I am going to start by saying that I have two school aged children and I sit with them and supervise the completion of their homework every night. I speak with their teachers about their progress and provide the support that I can. My children go to Tulsa public schools.

I think that lengthening the school day is a great idea. I read some research a while back (I tried to find a link and couldn’t do so quickly. I’ll keep looking and post if I find it.) The research showed that when a large percentage of the practice needed to become fluent in some concept was presented as homework, then the socioeconomic gap between students was widened. This makes perfect sense to me. If a parent is not, as many people here presume, a bad parent - but rather a parent that is struggling to make ends meet and raise their children, it is easy to see how a child might not get enough help. When the bulk of the practicing on a concept is done at home, the child falls behind because the parent cannot support the homework – either because they work evenings, or two jobs or perhaps don’t have enough education themselves to be of help.

If, on the other hand, the school day is lengthened and the time is used to allow children to practice the concepts with suitable support, overall measure of student understanding should increase correspondingly.

I’m fortunate that I am college educated, am home most evenings and can help my kids every night. Not every parent has that luxury and to unilaterally declare parents ‘bad’ because they can’t supervise homework every night is unkind.

As regards compensation for teachers, I think that if the additional time is used for helping with concept mastery through practice (supervised homework), the increase in hours worked will not be as great as it might seem on paper. A teacher’s work day isn’t over when the bell rings at the end of the day. They still have grading and preparation to do for the following day(s). If the students are doing ‘homework’, or practicing a concept, the teacher will have the opportunity to help the students, but also continue grading and doing prep. This is the same thing that I do at home with my class of two – I’m cooking dinner, doing household tasks, supervising homework and providing help when needed.

Ron Ballew, Lawton (11/17/2009 1:07:58 PM)

Obolishing compusionary education will improve achievement more than lengthening the school day.

Only the kids that want to go to school should be in school.