Paraphrasing and Summarizing

Paraphrase

The economic downturn has struck school districts leading them to trim down budgets, lay off staff, and reducing school days to four-day weeks (306). These reduced school days can cause controversy to parents and threaten student’s academic achievements. Too many children don’t spend enough time in school; research shows how U.S schools benefit a lot when school districts rise up classroom time. A great example of this is comes from Massachusetts where 10 schools recently raised their time in the school day to 25% raising their state scores in math, reading, and science. Many wonder if it’s not enough time from education students have from school breaks and holidays. Going through with this action will leave children with more time to cause trouble and for parents to be in need of daycare and or a sitter. This step was taken as a solution to the high gas prices that were seen in the summer as gas prices lower again there is hope districts can reconsider this action. (307)

Summary

According to Gregory A. Schmidt in his article “We Like the Four-Day Week” we see how the MACCRAY public schools transitioned their school days to a four day week. This is to help out with the tense finances and the yearning to keep academic programs the same. As a result of shorter school weeks the MACCRAY team researched to see if the districts with four-day schedules declined in any matter however, they saw no problem and people seemed to be adjusting. They seek improvement in attendance in both students and teachers. Students in the MACCRAY district now have shorter lunches, recess, and time between classes leaving them with more time to be in class this brought the district to gain 65 minutes to each instructional day. The districts savings are around 65,000. Though this is positive many still expect other district along with MACCRAY to keep it up in order to continue with this scheduling.