Chester Finn, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Education, makes the case for longer school days and years. A new study by Dave Marcotte, professor of public policy, shows that even the loss of a few instructional days can erode academic performance. Examining the days forfeited to snow and other "unscheduled closings" in Maryland in 2002-2003, he concluded that two-thirds of the elementary schools that failed to make "adequate yearly progress" (the federal benchmark under "No Child Left Behind") in math that year would have done so "if they had been open during all scheduled school days."
The article, “The Case for Saturday School,” ran on Monday, March 22, in the Wall Street Journal.
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