Shorter school years in Hawaii?

Should the school year be longer to accommodate the recession?

Hawaii is switching to a 4 day a week school year. This reduces the school year by 17 days or 10%. While other states are looking for ways to save money, such as the state of Utah switching to a 4 day a week service provider for certain services, is education really the category to take a large budget cut?

The US is slipping in its education amongst industrialized nations. Many 8^th graders are below grade level targets, and this is especially true in math and writing. Given how important education is, it makes little sense to cut the school year.

If anything, school years and/or school days should be longer. Students need more time with the basics, and cutting the year is not going to help them get the time they need. Especially with much of the beginning of the school year being spent on reviewing the year’s previous curriculum, wouldn’t year long schooling make more sense? The majority of the states are no longer farming communities, so the old model which focused around agrarian society is outdated.

It is no surprise that the US is lagging behind other industrialized countries when it spends more on foreign defense (and I mean we spend more on paying for other countries militaries) than our own education. Clearly there is a problem with this priority.

http://us.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2010/01/03/henry.hawaii.education.cnn  

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/09/13/national/main838207.shtml