The most serious failing of our K-12 system is rarely addressed because it would cost money to fix it and we can’t have that, can we? It’s that we still break for a three-month summer recess. That made sense for me as a farm boy in the ’50s, and I probably learned more on the back of a tractor than you city kids did watching Captain Kangaroo. But we aren’t a rural society any more — and a nine-month school year doesn’t even adequately cover the baby-sitting role of schools. That’s critical because it’s not the ’50s anymore and single-parent and/or two wage-earner families are now the norm. We can’t go on with the nine-month school year. It’s time to go to 11 months. Yes, that means paying teachers more and also finding another way to handle their continuing education, since summer school won’t be so easy for them. But as long as we cling to a 19-th century school year model, we will fail to properly educate kids for the 21st century.
