Sigh.

Let's revisit one of the recommendations from the Ed Reform Commission. You remember, the commission that said, "Pre-K for at-risk students works."

Recommendation number three reads:

"Transform and extend the school day and year to expand quality learning time for students, especially in underserved communities"

Great. I'm all for it. I especially agree that a longer school year could work.  Really, there's no reason students need to have two full months off.  I'd even compromise. North Carolina has an option for students to come for nine weeks, followed by three weeks off- but they come year round.  It works out to a similar amount of school days as your traditional year. The benefit though is that you never lose your students for more than three weeks at a stretch. No summer slide?

I think the realities of extending the school day are a little harder. Younger students I think are already tapped by three p.m.  Older students have jobs, baby sitting, and athletic events.  Yes, I agree, athletics are extra-curricular. But here at 43 degrees north latitude, daylight is an issue. If your October soccer game doesn't start by 3:30 or so, you're playing into the gloom.

Lastly on this issue: NY is still has a unionized education work force.  A work force which has demonstrated over the last couple of years a commitment more to maintaining traditional union values- work day, salary steps, retirement benefits- over making meaningful change.  The point is: show me the money.  This is not the type of change our unions will buy into without being bought.

Yawn

About a year ago, Governor Cuomo created a commission to look at the issues facing education in New York State.  Just the other day, the commission released its initial report. Remember, this took a year of work with some of our "top-level" folks.  Here's a brief overview of their recommendations- their preliminary action plan.

1. Provide high quality full-day pre-kindergarten for our most at-risk students;
2. Create statewide models for “Community Schools” that use schools as a community hub to improve access to public, non-profit, and private services/resources, like health and social services, for students and their families;
3. Transform and extend the school day and year to expand quality learning time for students, especially in underserved communities;
4. Improve the teacher and principal pipeline to recruit and retain the most effective educators;
5. Build better bridges from high school to college and careers with early college high schools and career technical education;
6. Utilize all available classroom technologies to empower educators to meet the needs of a diverse student population and engage students as active participants in their own learning;
7. Pursue efficiencies such as district consolidation, high school regionalization and shared services to increase student access to educational opportunities; and
8. Increase transparency and accountability of district leadership by creating a performance management system.

    Really? Those are the recommendations? There isn't a faculty room or BoE that couldn't come up with the same list.  A colleague of mine described it as "a lit review of the past 10-20 years of ed research."