bad press

I have gotten curious recently about other school systems around the country due to all of the negative press that our state received this past legislative session. Currently we are supposed to have 180 days of school, we begin school on or around August 25, and end school by June 7th. Elementary schools currently open the doors at 8:00 AM and class work begins by 8:30 AM and the final bell of the day doesn't ring until 3:30, we are supposed to have children "engaged" until 3:15. At 3:30 children who are parent pick-up are dismissed and then bus students are dismissed shortly after. Teachers here have been called lazy, money hungry, and pretty much anything in between by the public in the newspaper. WV is ranked 49th I believe in teacher salary. Hearing all of these things I automatically assumed that other areas around the country must be keeping their children in school for longer than 7 1/2 hours and going longer than 180 days since their school systems are so much better than WV's. Like I said I decided to do my own research. *Disclaimer all info was gathered from school board websites which may not have been updated this school year* :-)

My first search was Seattle. Elementary schools run from 9:00 - 3:00, I am going to assume that means children are working from 9:00 - 3:00 not that they show up at 9:00 for breakfast, because 9-3 is only a six hour school day, take away thirty minutes for lunch and it's down to 5 1/2 hours of engaged learning time. I searched other areas of Washington state and it's the same thing 9:00 start time and 3:00 dismissal. And of course Washington state starts their teachers out on the high end of $30,000. Next search was Phoenix, AZ close to the same time frame elementary began at 9 and ended around 3 or 3:15. Next was NYC schools which unfortunately I couldn't find a time listing for any of their schools, possibly for security reasons, I don't know. Next was Savannah, GA they too began at 9:00 but went until 3:45. However I figure that their doors open at 9:00 for children to began eating breakfast and classes don't actually begin until 9:30. Finally I searched Denver, CO simply because I have had people in the past tell me how good Colorado schools were. I couldn't find times but I did find that they only go to school 172 days...8 days less than poor ol' West Virginia students.

What's the point? The point is that I know in WV how hard children are getting pushed to succeed, and they should succeed but at what cost? Are we turning them off from learning because we keep them in schools for almost a full 8 hours and then send them home with an hour or two of homework each night? Are more and more great teachers going to leave our state because we are expected to do so much and get so little in return? Doesn't a 9 -3 shift sound good, WITH summers off on top of that? I'm going to try to find some drop out rates for these areas and look at more districts to see how long they are in school during the day and school year. I would imagine there is a correlation between the way children get pushed during school especially at a young age and how many actually finish high school.

So that this doesn't sound like I am whining let me say this, I love my job. I love teaching even on the really bad, hard days. I love to see my students succeed at something they said the day before they couldn't do. I also love my state and my school. I just worry that instead of instilling a love of learning in students we are actually turning them off by the expectations we place on them as young as Kindergarten.