Lengthening the School Day and Year

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The United States of America is falling behind other countries in every category, including economics, technology, and most importantly, education. America is a growing country, and without leaders to govern it in the future, it will continue to fall back among other countries. America should extend the school day and year to educate the future leaders of America and the world and save our country from certain doom.
Education is one of the most important aspects of society today. We as a society need educated young people to lead our country in the future. With more reliance on technology and science, society needs more scientists and engineers to maintain and develop these tools. We need to deal with major economic and environmental issues, support the poor, and defend human rights abroad. To continue these operations in the future, we need educated young people today. Without a proper education system, we will never have enough scientists or engineers to support our country and we will fall further behind other world powers.
America is now ranked 24th in science and 25th in math among developed countries, compared to 14th in science and 18th in math just 14 years ago (Sources 3 and 8). This downward trend will continue if we don't do anything about it. Most people recognize this huge problem and have proposed many solutions. Some people recommend we hire better teachers, and others recommend we raise the requirements for becoming a teacher. Another proposed solution is to abolish homework, like in Finland or Japan, and some believe that a curriculum change to emphasize science, math, engineering, and math (STEM) could solve our problems. The best proposed solution and the one with the most merit is extending the school day an...

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...icular sport. They also need to realize the needs of other students and their families, who may greatly benefit from the curriculum change. These other families could save on childcare or daycare services and not have to worry about their children getting in trouble. As we can see, the benefits of the extended schedule clearly outweigh the potential problems caused by it.
In summary, the American education system is falling behind those of other developed countries. We as a society need to fix this problem by extending the school day and year to give our students equal footing with the rest of the civilized world's students. Implementing this new school schedule has the benefits of keeping kids safe, giving students and teachers more time to learn and teach, and lessening summer learning loss. This new plan has the potential to change America forever for the better.

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