President Obama's latest lesson plan -- better student learning through a longer school calendar -- fails to account for some elementary considerations in its application.
Namely, the unintended consequences, which are significant.
The costs to school districts, both in staffing and in facility upgrades -- things like air conditioning for hot classrooms in summertime -- would be extensive. Teacher contracts likely would have to be renegotiated.
And the money families save for vacations, which would be curtailed or canceled⢠Well, somebody has to pay for the higher cost of longer school sessions.
Meanwhile industries that rely on vacation travelers will take a hit. And summer businesses that employ lower-cost teenage workers would have to find more costly alternatives.
All this, when the academic benefits of longer school sessions are vague at best. Florida's Miami-Dade public schools, for example, launched an extended school-year program in 2004. The initiative was dropped four years later because of limited results, according to a Fox News report.
Lengthening the time students spend in classrooms, in itself, doesn't promote better learning. School choice does -- by increasing competition among schools for education dollars, rewarding schools that excel and eliminating those that don't.
Mr. Obama doesn't need to reinvent the school calendar to achieve the proven education benefits of school choice.
