Longer School Year

Marcia Cholodenko’s letter (Aug. 18) is right on the money. How is our education system supposed to compete on a world scale when some students are in school for 157 days per year versus 240 or more for the best Asian and European systems? In addition to having fewer school days to work with, our teachers have the children for one to two hours per day less than some of the international school systems.

Every one of my children’s teachers I’ve spoken to says that he or she needs more time to cover all of the material that they need to cover. Some even arrange for extra hours outside of the normal school day to help those who ask for additional help (unpaid overtime).

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the next time that the teachers’ contract comes up for renewal, that both sides come in with the same proposal--to increase pay by 15% if the number of hours of in-classroom teaching were increased by 15%? This is a potential win-win situation where students would get more opportunity to learn, politicians would be able to point to doing something concrete for education (a top concern among voters) and teachers would get a hefty raise that might take them a decade to achieve otherwise.

Last, many of the anti-tax fanatics might even consider this proposal worthwhile, since unlike most other forms of government spending, we would be able to see something (more class time) for the dollars spent.

JIM MLADENIK

Irvine