[kiba]

This failure has consequences. America ranked 31st of the 56 countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, which assesses the academic skills and knowledge of 15-year-olds.

Two "easy to fix" reasons why our school sucks: Summer vacation and sleep depriving school schedule. Sleep is necessary for learning, but high school students don't get enough of it because their biology collides with school schedule. Summer vacation have a reputation for destroying education gain, because they're not spending time reviewing what they have learned. Review is crucial to the learning process, since our knowledge decay due to little or no use. That's why adults will have rusty math and know a lot less than high school seniors unless said adult is an engineer or a doctor.

They are easy to fix, in theory. All you have to do is distribute summer vacation days into the rest of the school years. All you have to do is shift starting time to something more reasonable like 8:30 AM or 9:00 AM.

However, they are hard, because of politics and culturally mandated stupidity.

[mhurron]

> shift starting time to something more reasonable like 8:30 AM or 9:00 AM

I never showed up before 9:00 am myself anyway, often much later. However, there really is nothing wrong with summer vacation, there is nothing wrong with letting kids and teenagers actually have some time to enjoy life and do things they would like to do.

If summer vacation destroyed your education gains, you probably hadn't really learned it to begin with. A little review will help you pass the test, but that's it.

>"That's why adults will have rusty math and know a lot less than high school seniors unless said adult is an engineer or a doctor."

They're not remembering it because they don't need it. You are not going to remember every detail of everything you learned in high school once you leave it if you don't need it. You learned it to give you a base from which to grow from. This is a horrible example to use for removing free time.

Of course, I could have simply said all of this with there is no such thing as an easy fix. The only time you can have an 'easy fix' problem is if the problem is trivial to begin with (education is not) or you simplified the issues down so far as to make your analysis of the issue useless.

[kiba]

I never showed up before 9:00 am myself anyway, often much later.

Good for you. However, my local high school still force students to start at 7:30ish in the morning.

However, there really is nothing wrong with summer vacation, there is nothing wrong with letting kids and teenagers actually have some time to enjoy life and do things they would like to do.

I am not suggesting we should end vacations. I am suggesting that the summer vacation is far too long. Or, we could supplement summer vacation with learning opportunities to reduce or prevent loss of knowledge.

If summer vacation destroyed your education gains, you probably hadn't really learned it to begin with. A little review will help you pass the test, but that's it.

Spaced repetition and the forgetting curve is a very real thing. It doesn't matter how well you learn the material. You'll need to review the materials at some point in the future.

They're not remembering it because they don't need it. You are not going to remember every detail of everything you learned in high school once you leave it if you don't need it. You learned it to give you a base from which to grow from. This is a horrible example to use for removing free time.

I am giving an example of forgetting/remembering knowledge, not showing deficiency in the education of adults.

[casca]

Summer vacation is only detrimental to poor kids. In wealthier households, the children get sufficient mental stimulation so as to come back to school without fallen behind.

The problem with changing school hours is that getting children to school needs to work around parent's work hours. This is less of a problem in other countries where young children can walk to school on their own or in groups, but would require massively changing American society to work.

[cowsaysoink]

I don't even know how you can justify the "only detrimental to poor kids."

It is far more an effect of the parents and household than it is economics of the house.

And that of the school hours is kind of wrong when you reach high school because that is when children take the bus or ride with friends with cars and drivers licenses.

Hours for school where I went (in the US):

    Elementary:    8:30am - 3:10pm
    Middle School: 8:20am - 3:00pm
    High School:   7:30am - 2:20pm

There is a huge difference in the high school, especially in bus in areas where buses come at anywhere from 6-6:45am. This isn't an issue caused by parent schedules or you would see similar times for middle and elementary school.

[akavi]

Wait, high schools starts earlier than Elementary?

I'm... dumbfounded by the idiocy of that (And a quick google indicates this isn't uncommon!).

Who on earth thought this was a good idea? Flip the ordering around and I'd bet you'd see significant improvement for practically no pain.

[shardling]

Typically it's because it's still dark out for the earlier block. Parents dislike having elementary school kids walk to school in the dark. (I have no idea whether it is actually less safe, but that's certainly the perception.)

[irishcoffee]

High school sports/after-school activities play into this timing

[kiba]

Summer vacation is only detrimental to poor kids. In wealthier households, the children get sufficient mental stimulation so as to come back to school without fallen behind.

Maybe so, but wikipedia indicates that is a problem not just for poor kids, but also middle income kids as well.

The problem with changing school hours is that getting children to school needs to work around parent's work hours. This is less of a problem in other countries where young children can walk to school on their own or in groups, but would require massively changing American society to work.

For older students, this is not much of a problem, but smaller children does indeed provide significant challenge. However, given that adults are also continuously sleep deprived too, society will probably gain a lot from shifting their schedule.

[throwaway1979]

Really have to disagree with summer vacation. Motivated students need time to learn and explore. While Newton's account is slightly controversial, he invented Calculus when he was at home from school (school had shut down due to the plague). I've always got more work/studying done during vacation times. Less holidays would have crippled my exploration.

[kanamekun]

<< All you have to do is distribute summer vacation days into the rest of the school years. >>

How would that work... would working parents have to take off those days to watch their kids?

[kiba]

For small children, that is an issue. Maybe they'll hire babysitters or send the kids to "fun" school or to daycare centers.

Teenagers and high school students can take care of themsleves.

[halefx]

They'd probably do the same thing they do now during the 2 months of summer vacation..

[slinkycode]

What is the issue with summer vacation, and how would breaking it up throughout the year mitigate that issue? Genuinely want to read up on this. Thanks.

[kiba]

Spacing effect and the forgetting curve. When you're not reviewing information, you will eventually forget. Hence, the need for constant review. Otherwise, you start off the school year reviewing information that you have learned the previous school years. That wastes time that could otherwise be spent on learning new knowledge.

[bromang]

this might help improve performance (though probably the effect will be much smaller than you think), but it doesn't explain the comparative weakness of american PISA results.

[kiba]

Why not? Sleep deprivation and long summer vacations will add up over time.

[yorak]

Because: Finland? We have 2 month summer vacation in elementary school (189 work days/year). The school days seem to begin around 8.30 am. And we were long time the best country in PISA rankings (currently ranked 3nd after a city state of Shanghai and South Korea).

What many people who try to model the success of Finnish education system fail to see, is that Finnish society is highly equal. This is true between genders and especially between individuals from different social status and background. We work hard to give high quality education for everybody, no matter the cost.

This is the reason why sometimes I wonder how the projects that aim to export the Finnish school model to the countries like Saudi-Arabia can succeed, if the profound problems with the inequality deep in respective societies is not addressed first.

The PISA measures averages and it is in cutting the lower performing tail of the distribution where Finland excels.

[snogglethorpe]

Seriously ... summer holidays are pretty universal; it's not like countries generally considered to have very good educational systems don't have them.

China, Korea, Japan, all have 6-8 weeks of summer holiday; the U.S. seems to have somewhat more on average (of course in all of these countries there's some local variation), maybe 8-10 weeks, but that doesn't seem enough of a difference to have any dramatic effect.

The U.S.'s problems with education are cultural: American culture does not value education. School scheduling is mostly irrelevant.