>The middle one is absolutely true, the other two I really doubt e.g. in Finland or Germany, schoolday starts around 9AM and ends around 2PM, yielding 3h30 to 4h studies a day accounting for breaks, 5 days/week, with little homework (maybe 5h/week total). Afternoon is usually dedicated to clubs.

In the context of at-risk kids, I think the idea is to maximize the amount of time the kids get to spend away from their toxic and stressful home environments.

I am a bit skeptical of the overall "minimize idle time" idea, though. They seem to be on board with giving the kids enough free time to do independent study and stuff, but whether that's any good will depend on how it's implemented.

If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it?

It seems that everyone is recognizing this is the problem, but the solutions all revolve around school, when it really doesn't have anything to do with schools.

Edit: Or boarding schools.

>If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it?

Because the prospect of forcibly separating kids from their parents based on the decisions of aloof and poorly managed bureaucrats is a political and ethical nightmare.

The solution revolves around schools because schools are considered a legitimate area of public concern while individuals' family-lives (barring some extreme circumstances) are not.

Also, this program provides job training and counseling services for the parents of the kids too.

Boarding schools don't work for poor communities because the kids are often relied upon to do work for the family. This can mean helping with the family enterprise or it can mean older kids taking care of younger kids, elderly family members, or just helping out around the house.

> Because the prospect of forcibly separating kids from their parents based on the decisions of aloof and poorly managed bureaucrats is a political and ethical nightmare.

That's not at all what was being suggested.

Well, yeah, it was mostly producing non-aloof and well-managed bureaucrats (and dealing with similar problems in the people to whom they hand off kids), but at that point you've created a solution that still involves forcible separation. You might as well try to address the problems motivating separation, since you you've posed a similarly difficult problem as a partial mitigation.

I would have loved to attend a boarding school growing up...but living in a toxic family environment isn't so simple for the family or the kid. My mother enabled my alcoholic father, my sisters and I tried to protect each other, it would have been tragic to pull us all apart. I was out of the house as much as possible with school clubs and extra curricular like the boy scouts. Leaving my extended family, friends, etc and the shame of being a "foster" kid is a huge charge for someone in a toxic environment. Also abusive families are not black and white, there are good moments. After school programs, sports, music etc are a lifesaver for students with problems at home.

There are a lot of people working extremely hard in that field. It's just not very flashy or politically salient since it's so personal so it's very hard to rally people around it to get some more funding to these programs. Taking kids away from their parents always goes through the courts and is not in any way as simple as you make it out to be. Giving away your kids, even if you've fucked your life up is not something most people want to do voluntarily.

Do you have children? The flippant way you say that we should take the children away from their families makes me think not.

Not all parents should be allowed to raise their children...

Are you sure you're not actually saying "poor parents shouldn't be allowed to raise their children"?

Ideas like this are always presented as a "common sense" solution like "let's reduce welfare fraud" and no one would disagree with that, and then in actual implementation it ends up being "let's target poor people, people of color, and immigrant families" even if that's not what was intended from the start.

I fail to see how fixing broken homes (which we don't have a ready-made solution for) is an easier solution than making school more helpful to kids (one solution to which is what this article is about), so I don't think the parent's argument is made in good faith.

Yeah, you rarely see proponents of this considering the toxic households in Orange County or Beverly Hills for interventions.

What are your criteria?

> ...and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it

who is going to fund that? wouldn't it be better to support the families as they are? help improve peoples lives instead of ripping families apart

For what it's worth, children from at-risk families achieve better education when the father ends up incarcerated. So we can absolutely make a case for "ripping families apart" and against supporting "families as they are".

> My findings suggest that on average, parents who are on the margin of incarceration are likely to reduce the amount of schooling their child attains if they instead remain in the household. This can be explained because the removal from the household of a violent parent or a negative role model can create a safer environment for a child (Johnson, 2008; Jaffee et al., 2003). Incarceration is also a mechanism that can limit the intergenerational transmission of violence, substance abuse, and crime to children. This result also relates to findings in other fields that conclude that See Kling (2006), Aizer and Doyle, 2013; Di Tella and Schargrodsky (2013), Mueller-Smith, 2015; and Bhuller et al., 2016, among others. For example, using data from Sweden, Hjalmarsson and Lindquist (2007) report significant father-son correlations in criminal activity that begin to appear between ages 7 and 12, and are 3 the positive effects of being raised by one’s parents depend on the quality of care they can provide (Jaffee et al., 2003).

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5664c583e4b0c0bb910ce...

You summarized the paper as, “children from at-risk families achieve better education when the father ends up incarcerated.”

The one study you’re citing here might suggest your summary statement if “parents on the margin of incarceration” was equivalent to “children from at-risk families”. But those are very different concepts.

You can have an at risk family just by being low-income. Certainly many low-income families are drawn into crime, but by no means all, or even a majority, of low-income families, have a parent who is at the margin of incarceration.

I think the only thing you can reasonably conclude from this study is that leniency in the judicial system towards parents just because they’re parents may be misguided.

> those are very different concepts

They are overlapping. Moreover, "parents on the margin of incarceration" are an extremely significant group of parents for whom the discussion of "supporting families as is" vs. "ripping apart" is meaningful at all. For most poor families it's irrelevant as there's no grounds for dissolution.

I believe you can't deny that it's much more common and publicly acceptable to claim that such a criminal parent should be shown leniency when possible, because having no parent at all is horrible. Yet we have evidence to the contrary.

I concede that this may be inapplicable for some other cases (or at least that we have no proof that it would be applicable yet). However, I personally think that those "at risk families" where parents create an atmosphere that's detrimental for stydying (by being aggressive, anti-intellectual etc.) may well be worse than outright criminal ones, and I believe it'd be proven in due time.

I think leniency for violent crimes or burglary is probably misguided in at risk communities.

For most non-violent crimes, this study was unconvincing (generally speaking I’d like to see incarceration alternatives for non-violent crime, why send people to crime school at tax-payer expense?).

I agree that for these groups, there’s an elevated chance that the parent is actively harming their family. I just don’t think it would be statistically justified to separate families that aren’t criminal.

And, of course, it would be deeply inhumane.

I am appalled that such an assertion can be made openly. It is, frankly, simply vile to suggest that children be taken away from struggling parents by society, rather than society being obligated to help those parents raise their children. To do so would be not only criminal, but profoundly immoral.

Facts matter. Evidence matters. We should not ignore evidence because it disagrees with our ideology. And we certainly should not attack someone for trying to bring in evidence to a discussion about something as important as raising our children.

The poster you are responding to didn't even suggest a course of action. He mearly provided evidence that the "obvious" course of action might not be so obviously correct. You are free to (as another poster did) question the relevence, interperatation, or quality of the evidence, or provide other evidence or arguments to disagree with what the poster was presenting. But you should not attack someone for trying to have an evidence based discussion.

Even if he turns out to be completely wrong, figuring out how he is wrong will likely be far more enlightening than simply asserting that he is wrong on moral grounds.

> we can absolutely make a case for "ripping families apart"

I don't see how that isn't a suggestion of a course of action -- one that that is a blatant misuse of a study (with small effects only measured over a small time period) toward ideological ends, i.e. supporting the seizure of children of disadvantaged parents.

Moreover, I refuse to have an evidence-based discussion about whether certain people deserve human rights. That shifts the Overton window to present such ideas as acceptable, when in a civilized society they should not be.

I am not going to enter a discussion on the merits of the underlying argument because you have already acknowledged that you have no interest in doing so.

Returning to the meta discussion. Let us trace the course of the conversation in question:

neuland: ...focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it

house9-2: wouldn't it be better to support the families as they are? help improve peoples lives instead of ripping families apart

textor: For what it's worth, children from at-risk families achieve better education when the father ends up incarcerated. So we can absolutely make a case for "ripping families apart" and against supporting "families as they are".

The only proposal being made here is a voluntary foster/adoption system with encouragement. This is then framed as "ripping families apart". While this framing is arguably unfair, it is within the bounds of reason so, giving it the most charitable interpretation possible, textor responds to "ripping families apart" in the context in which it was introduced and provided evidence that keeping blood families together is not inherently the best course of action. To be clear, at this point the conversation is about how much we should be supporting voluntary adoption; and textor is arguing that the idea is not as inherantly bad as house9-2 seems to be assuming.

Stepping up a level of meta:

>I refuse to have an evidence-based discussion about whether certain people deserve human rights.

This is what political correctness looks like. Literally. You are interested in what is politically correct, evidence be dammed. Further, no one in this discussion has argued for denying people human rights. Even further, every society on the planet accepts that we can violate "human rights" in some sense for the greater good. Eg. prisons deny people their human right of freedom; taxes partially deny the right of personal property.

At risk of entering into the merits of the original discussion, leaving children in poor home environment arguably denies them their human rights, including their right to: education security of person, and food.

How do we balance these conflicting goals? With evidence to inform us what our options are and what effects they will have with regards to our goals.

Going meta again:

> one that that is a blatant misuse of a study ...

It is not a blatant misuse; it is extrapolating beyond the facts of the original study. The first step of evidence based inquiry is to work with the evidence you have. This informs the questions you can ask, so you can look for the evidence you want to have [0]. Once you've done that, you can move onto making the evidence you want to have [1]. Each step of this process provides a foundation to build the next step.

And yes, the process is not as simple as I lay out. You need theory crafting. And once your theory starts to develop holes, it may be time to revisit an earlier step until you have enough of a foundation to make the later steps worthwhile (either because your foundation is strong, is the lower tiers are short of relevant evidence)

> ... toward ideological ends,

Please take a moment to rethink who is arguing towards ideological ends. In my experience, it is generally the person arguing against the concept of evidence; not the one trying to ground themselves in evidence.

>That shifts the Overton window to present such ideas as acceptable

And what about the overton window you are moving towards. Where it is accatable to blatantly argue that evidence should be ignored. Where the very concept of introducing evidence is morally abhorant. Is that the window you want us to live in?

>when in a civilized society they should not be.

Are you arguing that the very concept of seperating children from their parents has no place in civilized society? Child Protective Services might disagree with you. They do place strong emphasis on keeping families together where possible; but they acknowledge that sometimes conditions are so bad that it is unacceptable to leave a child in that situation. Where is the line that determines what warrents CPS to remove children from their families? Again, evidence is the best approach to find it, unless you want to remove children unnecessarily while leaving others in bad situations that they would be far better off out of.

Going meta again:

The discussion is not simply two extremes. Even if we agreed that one (or both) extremes was morally untenable, by seriously exploring the benifits of it, we can look for ways to obtain those same benifits by other means: such as turning school into a 'second home', as this the content of the original article, or voluntary foster care with active involvment of the birth parents in a non-primary-guardian capacity.

[0] And by want to have, I mean the evidence that answers the questions you want to ask; not the evidence that supports the conclusion you want to reach

[1] Again, in the sense of the evidence that answers the questions you want answered.

While I appreciate your even-handed and careful defense of the point I was making, it's probably necessary to note that I didn't consider the merits of adoption at all. I have no idea what sort of policy to support on this issue. Indeed, the only thing I was objecting to was the idea of the company of biological parents being preferable by default. Given the evidence, I think that options rank like this: good parents > good foster parents > single parent > no parents > violent antisocial parent(s). Maybe it's wrong, but I don't immediately see how and believe we shouldn't assume that any position pro "ripping families apart", whatever the circumstances, is indefensible. If anything, the only policy I can responsibly advocate for, and not just voice general agreement with, is more rigorous and unbiased research into life outcomes.

Same people funding these insane school programs?

Who are you to say what charitable cause a private citizen spends their money on? Do you want to complain that Bill Gates spends money trying to cure malaria rather than remove trash from the ocean too?

no but i'll absolutely complain about the way the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has changed the school system in the US.

I'm not familiar with their influence, but I'd love to learn about it! Please link me to more details.

Here’s one overview: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-gates-educat...

Common Core specific: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bill-gates-pulle...

they are entirely responsible for common core, and teachers pay based on standardized tests.

Lebron James has to fix all the ills in American society? Hmm I wonder why this country can't get anything productive done...

You have people pouring money into the school system, and the OP says it's in the wrong spot, and then the next poster asks, but who will fund that? clearly take money from one, put it in the other if that's the solution.

Why are they insane?

Common core and teachers wages dependent on standardized testing is nuts.

Do america's teacher wage depends on the child result to a standardized test?

No, they're exaggerating. Some school funds are dependent on testing results. The better a school performs, the more funding they get from federal programs (some, not all). To say that teachers' wages are dependent on the results of these tests is just disingenuous.

in most states now yes. all because of bill gates.

> If the problem is toxic home environments though, why aren't people suggesting that we cut out the middle man and focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it?

Or we could just try to fix th social problems that produce the toxic home environments rather than ripping apart the families that society has already failed.

And we could stop using the word “toxic” to describe poor people.

This comment breaks the site guideline which asks:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. That's not allowed here, and we ban accounts that do it, regardless of your politics; it's destructive of what this site exists for. Please stop doing that and use HN as intended, in the spirit of intellectual curiosity and thoughtful conversation. We'd appreciate it.

It's not poor people but their social environment that is described as toxic.

Also, all too often accurate of their physical environment, and the two aren't completely unrelated.

Because it is really hard to compete with the love a parent, even a really shitty one.

It's not even really that. Your home environment sets your barometer for what normal life looks like and for how strangers can be expected to behave. If your parents fight and assume ill intent in every mistake then you see that in every interaction. If they're constantly trying to get one over on each other then that's how you see human relationships. They don't have to love you or be particularly invested in you for you to learn some really screwed up lessons from them.

It is really even that. Just because it may not be logical or make sense, family bonds amd familial love are still a thing, even in families with lots of problems.

Because society is really bad at determining what is acceptable parenting. Look how popular the tiger mom bullshit is. Our foster system is also incredibly bad. It's easier to trust society in aggregate than it is to trust an individual.

Also helps the parents who need to be at work.

Exactly. Shorter days are difficult for working parents. I'd rather my child have a reasonable learning day and then structured extra-curricular activities (even if it's just semi-organised craft, science, etc play) than making concessions at work. Not all vocations can negotiate shorter hours or part-time work without risking their employment.

And research consistently shows that teenagers perform better if you start school later in the day than 7am. E.g., http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192636502086633... "shifted the school start timefrom 7:15 a. m. to 8:40 a. m. This article examines that change, finding significant benefits such as improved attendance and enrollment rates, less sleeping in class, and less student-reported depression."

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1540200070126380... "Students at the late-starting school reported waking up over 1 hr later on school mornings and obtaining 50 min more sleep each night, less sleepiness, and fewer tardies than students at the early school."

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/pol.3.3.62 "Results show that starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation."

From the article linked in the article:

https://www.ohio.com/akron/news/education/i-promise-school-a...

>I Promise kids’ school days will start an hour later than their peers. They’ll also receive an additional hour after school every day called the “illumination period,” which will be a time for extra mentoring, studying or club activities.

Not only does the school day start an hour later, the extra time in the day comes from support of extracurricular activities.

I don’t imagine most working adults would be willing to work starting so early. Why do we force children who need even more sleep to do so?

So that the adults can get to work on time.

Mostly this ^. As a parent you want to get to work on time. So staggering when school starts is both good for traffic and parents’ sanity.

>Mostly this ^. As a parent you want to get to work on time. So staggering when school starts is both good for traffic and parents’ sanity.

Part of it is the assumption that kids can't get to school on their own. I was walking by myself to school when I was 6.

And in a lot of places the built environment is such that kids really can't get to school on their own. Schools are either far away, public transit isn't possible, or there just aren't sidewalks, crosswalks, or safe routes to walk.

Fortunately the densely built areas don't have most of those problems. As long as the neighborhood kids travel in groups they're fine. And the "I Promise" program gives them their own bicycles and free rides to and from school within 2 miles.

I walked to school as I was growing up in Nairobi but realize that it’s not possible for my daughter.

Nairobi would probably have questionable security compared to the US, but I’m guessing we are probably judged quite harsh here in US.

There was just this article other day where a woman faced jail time or massive fines because she left her “not-so-baby” baby in the car. My dad used to leave us in the car all the time with windows open.

I can’t do any of that. Mostly because I may end up in jail. That’s the reality of US.

So why don't we have kids start school at 9, adults start work at 10, kids get out of school at 5 instead of 3, adults get out of work at 6 instead of 5, problem solved???

More proof of how far down the list of priorities Americans place education.

School starts are staggered so the district can use fewer buses (at least they are around here). Middle school at 7:55, High school at 8:35, Elementary at 9:20.

Here it's the opposite. Elementary starts earlier than middle school. I actually prefer this because our middle school age kid is fine to get out to the bus on her own. The elementary school twins not as much. I can leave for my train earlier this way.

Follow the money. In this case, the money is in the bus system. You only need one set of buses and drivers if you stagger school starts. Overlapping school starts means overlapping demand for buses.

The high school I went to looked into shifting the start time later because of research like this. Unfortunately, they concluded that it wasn't feasible because of after school sports -- our teams play against other high schools in the area, and the timing of that is based on when all the schools start. So if one school wants to start later, its students wouldn't be done in time for sports games and such. Pretty lame.

I'm glad your school is prioritizing what's really important.

"The day they cut the football budget in this state, that will be the end of Western Civilization as we know it!"

-- Mr Holland's Opus

Longer school days help parents hold down full time jobs. A longer school year eliminates the need for babysitters or camps in the 10-12wk summer break, and also provides continuity of curriculum. Food is pretty easy and many schools are providing at least two meals already. A good number have things like backpack programs[1], also, to send food home (either in the evening or more commonly for the weekend).

[1] http://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/hunger-relief-program...

A school that starts at 9am is unheard of in Germany. The standard time is 7:45am or 8:00am.

Also Ganztagsschulen (all-day schools) are getting very common (more than 60% and rising, see https://www.ganztagsschulen.org/de/19001.php). Kids stay there at until 4pm or so.

I don't know why you mention Germany in the first place, it's education system isn't top notch compared to Scandinavian schools.

For kids with unstable home environments, I think it's valuable to give them more time at school. Hopefully, the extra time includes ample opportunities for arts, sports, clubs, and other "non-academic" pursuits.

Absolutely. Most of this extra time ("wraparound time") is not necessarily structured class/tutoring time but unstructured time allowing kids to explore things like art or even play in a safe environment.

Sure but that's not how I interpret "longer school days" which sounds like more time butt-in-seat.

I don’t see why that would be presumed. It’s less expensive to give kids supervised free time than to teach lessons.

Ratios for structured play tend to be 1:8 adults to children (in UK), whilst classrooms are 1:30. Teachers are usually paid more, but not 3½ times more.

NSPCC recommend 1:6 ratio for 4-8 year olds doing activities.

I'd say max 1:3 if you want to give parent level care engaging with a child in activities the child is choosing in a meaningful way.

I believe it also depends on the environment around the school. In a third-world country, I'd probably prefer being safely indoors at school and in contact with friends, with free time if needed, than in a sketchy area without being able to see many friends. In a rich European country, there's enough public infrastructure (public transport, libraries, parks, etc.) that I'd probably prefer to be outside.

> In a third-world country, I'd probably prefer being safely indoors at school

That's a ridiculous generalization. Most developing countries have lower crime rates than some American inner cities. Heck, many developing countries are safer than some developed countries.

In general the whole "third-world" or "developing" country categorization is wrong.

You absolutely cannot compare Northern Europe with inner-city black America. Different worlds, different values, different histories, different attitudes, different challenges. No model fits all, especially in education, but these two realities are so dramatically different that they don’t really belong in the same sentence.

Agreed. Using Finland as an example is absurd. Finland has a very wealthy, very homogeneous population. Longer school days are designed, in this case, to keep many of these kids in a safe environment for as long as possible.

==Using Finland as an example is absurd. Finland has a very wealthy, very homogeneous population.==

Finland is 21% less wealthy than America on a per capita basis.

Finland GDP per capita - $35,964.77

US GDP per capita - $45,759.46

-http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Finland/Uni...

Finland has a drastically lower poverty rate, lower income inequality [1] and lower violent crime rate than the United States [2].

This fact, combined with Finland's well-known social safety nets leads to the obvious conclusion that you would be hard pressed to find living conditions like those in the slums of Akron/Cleveland in Finland.

[1]https://data.oecd.org/finland.htm#profile-government [2]http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Finland/Uni...

==This fact, combined with Finland's well-known social safety nets leads to the obvious conclusion that you would be hard pressed to find living conditions like those in the slums of Akron/Cleveland in Finland.==

Isn't it possible that Finland's well-known social safety net is at least partially responsible for the lower poverty, income inequality and violent crime rates?

It's absolutely the case, no question; but the problem here is that a school model that works in that scenario is unlikely to work in the current American scenario. It's like writing programs for high-level APIs (that will take care of memory, sorting and so on) versus writing programs against the POSIX interface (where you have to basically do everything yourself).

Yes, and I absolutely agree with the the other reply that such a model would be completely ineffective in the type of neighborhoods LeBron's school is targeting. I hope this model is successful because I think it could greatly benefit under-served communities.

> Finland has a ... very homogeneous population

I don't know this to be true or false, but is there any evidence of it? And is there any evidence that it has an effect on educational effectiveness? I wouldn't expect an effect; people learn to read, write and do math in K-12 all over the world.

They also have policies in place to support parents at the beginning of a child's life (i.e. the most important developmental phase of life). They also have a lower GDP per capita and somehow still afford all of these benefits that we are continually told would bankrupt our country. Truly a country of "family values".

- Maternity boxes - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maternity_package

- New child leave - Expecting mothers in Finland can start their maternity leave seven weeks before their estimated due date. After that the government covers 16 additional weeks of paid leave through a maternity grant, regardless of whether the mother is a student, unemployed, or self-employed. The country also offers eight weeks of paid paternity leave. - https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-with-best-parental...

- Partial Care Leave - After a child turns three, parents may take partial care leave, meaning, you can work fewer hours per day or week in order to spend more time with your child — and though you can’t take partial care leave at the same time, both the father and the mother can take the partial care leave at a different times. This innovative leave lasts until the end of the child’s second school year. - https://inhabitat.com/inhabitots/finlands-family-benefits-pr...

- Universal Healthcare - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Finland

Indeed, Finland is a model state in so many ways. That is why they can do with schools stuff that likely won't fit the immediate needs of inner-city US minorities: Finns can have short school times because parents have flexible working arrangements, generous subsidies, free healthcare and so on. Finnish kids go home to solid families that can make time for them without sacrificing their wealth; American kids go home to parents who are overworked, absent, or even addicted -- especially the poorer ones. In that situation, it's much better to keep them in school doing activities for as long as possible.

To be honest, you don't even have to go as far as the US, there are very similar issues in European banlieues and the likes. Long school hours used to be a typical postwar demand of progressive worker-rights movements, because it freed parents (especially women) to pursue career advancement and focused kids on academic achievement. I am a product of that sort of system, myself: from the age of 6 to the age of 12, I would be in school from 8:30am to 4:30pm, 5 days a week - plus an optional extra hour at both ends because my parents couldn't pick me up sooner. Unfortunately, after the social regression of the last 20 years, that kind of system is slowly disappearing in Europe too, and for all the bad reasons (cost-cutting).

> You absolutely cannot compare Northern Europe with inner-city black America.

Bad schools are throughout the United States, especially in poor areas, of which predominantly African-American regions make up only one part.

Also, while the parent's claim is a common excuse for inaction and lack of funding, I have yet to see any basis for it. While every case is different, we can all learn from others.

100%.

My working theory is, it is context dependent if longer school days, and terms are better or worse.

For example: With Children that have a rich home environment, plenty of interactions that stimulate them, keeping them at school longer may hamper development.

On the flip side you have an environment where this is not the case. Examples include socio-economic factors like parents/care givers working long hours.

I recently did research into this exact problem in South Africa. What are the factors that impact on education in communities that have socio-economic challenges?

The challenges are numerous and as this article says. The environment around the children just makes it extremely difficult for them to break out of the cycle of poverty.

These factors include:

being hungry,

crime,

lack of sanitation-this is a problem in South Africa they get sick more often then their counterparts in other areas.This results in them missing more school which puts them behind.,

Parents working long hours, travelling distances to get to work

Lack of resources in schools or support

There really is a multitude of problems each impacting the other creating a self perpetuating cycle of poverty.

Out of the research into the problems I developed a concept for a social enterprise that could solve some of these problems.

Trying to identify some funding sources as traditional vc will not be suitable. Maybe impact investors?

If the above sounds interesting, you are keen to explore leveraging education for social change or exploring alternative educational models mail me. Email is in profile

If the kids we're coming from stable, supportive home environments where learning can take place outside the classroom, you might be right. But those aren't the target students for the program; IMO the student's from rough home lives will almost assuredly benefit from this model.

> If the kids we're coming from stable, supportive home environments where learning can take place outside the classroom, you might be right.

The entire point of the finnish model is that this doesn't happen, there is no homework and there is no suggestion or expectations of parental teaching. There is extensive support for both kids and their parents (including good free meals and teacher-provided tutoring), but all teaching is done by the teacher.

How do you spend time with a child and not teach them?

For lower socioeconomic status kids a stable environment means not being at school at 6 am because Mom kicked you out to 'party' with her new boyfriend, or not coming to school high because Dad hotboxed on the drive over.

Sounds like a case for boarding schools. Does that technology not exist anymore in the US?

If people can't get their shit together enough to make sure their kid has a sandwich everyday they certainly aren't putting their kid into boarding school. Parents found unfit for parenting have their kids placed in the foster system, but that is a lengthy legal process.

> If people can't get their shit together enough to make sure their kid has a sandwich everyday they certainly aren't putting their kid into boarding school.

If that's the good public school of the area why wouldn't they?

Parents don't encourage kids to read, eat better, sleep at reasonable times, etc...

I think the point is that school is safer and provides better nourishment than the students own home, considering the low-poverty and crime-ridden areas some - or even many - of the students live at.

> Finland or Germany

Both those countries are also very prosperous and innovative. It seems the people or culture are what makes them do so well not the amount of school hours.

For all we know parents in those countries are far more supportive of their children. And may also be intelligent enough to assist their children with the homework. By intelligent I mean they are able to teach their children well I don't mean to be able to understand what a six year-old is learning (if not there is a far bigger problem!).

FYI parental involvement has no impact on educational attainment, a proxy for intelligence: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028961...

The longer school day and it's structure are, per the article, designed to provide compensation for at-home support that is deficient in the target population; done right—e.g., so it doesn't just look like normal classroom time stretched longer—this may well be the best available mitigation for the social problem it is addressing.

I was one of the lucky kids who went to a very well funded school district because my parents managed to snag one of the, like, 15 housing units within it that didn't cost a million dollars a year to live in.

They had a really good after-school program for me and the other 30 or so kids whose parents had to work long hours with no flexibility. We were supervised by an adult to make sure we didn't kill each other but it was mostly about having free-time to do homework, read books, and play pick-up soccer or whatever.

Edit: To be honest, it's probably a better environment that we would have gotten at home, even with caring, attentive parents. We had access to the whole school library and our adult supervision actually knew our curricula so they could help us with the homework better than our parents could. Home computers weren't really a thing yet, so being able to use the shelf of encyclopedias was huge.

The difference is that in Finland etc. there are social services and childcare systems in place to support those kids outside of school hours.

Where does an inner city African American kid go after school if both parents (or single parent) are working? Who pays for that?

In countries with adequate social services, this is less of an issue.

There's really solid evidence that increasing classroom time increases learning.

Of course, people haven't yet gotten the idea that we should try to accomplish sufficient learning with minimum classroom time.

> There's really solid evidence that increasing classroom time increases learning.

There's really solid evidence that intellectual performance drops sharply long before 40h/week. Unless the "classroom time" you talk about includes a lot of off-time and non-butt-in-seat activities it seems you'll be deep into diminishing returns if not outright losing if you increase the length of the school day. My own memories of schools are that by late afternoon many students had stopped following altogether.

As long as you pay teachers overtime for all the extra hours they'll be working to put together curriculum for your longer school days, I'm in. It's not just students who have to be working during those hours, it's also teachers.

Read both sentences before getting ultra snarky please.

Longer school days might help kids with stressful home environment but it also poses risk to bonding b/w kids and parents especially for parents who are able to provide and are working towards holistic(moral, etc.) development of their kids. Longer school days should be optional with extra curricular activities to fill the later part of the day.

Well then send them to a different school

your example doesn't contradict the idea of having a longer school day or school year. as others have said, kids who lack a nurturing home environment can benefit from a nurturing environment at school (if that's what it truly is).

for example, school could open at 6am for parents who work early, but not start until 9am. the intermediary time could be nap time, unstuctured play, or guided exploration (gardening, science experiments, even animal husbandry in rural areas). between structured classroom time, they could have more breaks for more naps, play or exploration. school could end later so parents can pick them up after work, and have shorter and more frequent vacations so kids don't forget so much in-between.

you could even have morning or evening joint learning times, where parents join in to learn how to teach and encourage their kids (such programs seem to help break the cycle of poverty).