Editor’s note: This year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation establishing a four-year pilot program to study whether year-round school helps eliminate learning loss. The following national commentary about time spent in American schools was written by Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. It originally appeared in Forbes.
Should we be worried that our kids are getting less instruction than their global peers? Advocates and public officials sure are. They’ve long argued that American students need to spend more time in school. Such pleas have been redoubled in the aftermath of the pandemic, with New Mexico just this spring adding weeks to its mandated school year.
Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan once told a congressional hearing, “Our students today are competing against children in India and China. Those students are going to school 25 to 30 percent longer than we are. Our students, I think, are at a competitive disadvantage.”
But are the concerns well-founded?
Not necessarily. Getting kids back in school after pandemic closures and disruptions was necessary and vital. But more generally, as I explain in The Great School Rethink, it turns out that American kids spend a lot of time in school compared to their peers around the world. And many parents came away from pandemic-era remote learning with a sense that students do less each day than they’d previously thought.
It’s true that the U.S. school year is on the shorter side when compared to other advanced economies. Most U.S. students attend school 180 days each year. In Finland, the maximum year is 190 days (though many schools employ a shorter calendar). The school year is 190 days in Hong Kong, Germany, and New Zealand; 200 in the Netherlands; 210 in Japan; and 220 in South Korea.
When tallying instructional time, though, it’s not just days in school; it’s also the time in each school day. The typical school day for American students is over six and a half hours. For Finnish students, it’s about five hours. In Germany, it’s five and a half. In Japan, it’s six.
