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Comment by loggedintocom | Hacker News Reader

Is there any research that indicates that more time in school leads to better educational outcomes?

I don't have hard numbers, but I wold like to point out that Japanese students spend more days per year and longer hours in school, as well as hours of cram school on top of it for most of them, than Canadian schools, and yet Canadian students overall end up ranked higher on than Japanese students on every ranking I've ever seen.

Canadian schools also spend more than $3000 per student per year on average than American schools.

What American schools need is more quality, not more quantity.

Yes, for lower income student it has * stupendously* good outcomes.

I would be interested in what studies this information comes from and what locales it was done in.

http://www.pbs.org/makingschoolswork/sbs/kipp/index.html is something about it

That study seems to draw all its conclusions from inner city / low income. I would submit it is not a model for the rest of the country unless further testing is done in other environments.

story: A couple of decades ago I used to work on grants and educational programs. One group came to ND to give a lecture on risk factors. In Minot ND, they told the crowd that "firearms" automatically means more violence. "It has been proven in studies" they said. One member of the crowd asked how many people in the room owned firearms. The poll came back at about 90% with many (40%) owning 3 or more. No history of violence in that crew. They were all social worker types who liked to hunt or in the case of one, target shoot. I got ahold of their source data for studies and found two things. A specific firearm study was never done and all the data came from CA or NY cities.

The USA is a large and diverse place, I am a little cynical of best practices taken from urban environments and applied to suburban and rural areas without add research and being a little more specific on why stuff seems to be working.

I'd contend communities with a large number of handguns (but no rifles) probably does have a crime problem, it's just likely the guns are a response to it, less than a cause.

Well, ND gun ownership and murder rates by means would seem to make your contention false. ND which has a large number of handguns per capita, had 2 murders in 2008 and both were stabbings.

Its not the guns or any other object, its the conditions and attitudes that make a place dangerous. Dangerous people will use the weapons they have or improvise weapons (IED) if they have none.

You misunderstood my statement I think: I'm saying 1> Handguns with no rifles is a situation you get when people feel they need personal protection, aka, high crime. I'm saying they are an effect, rather than a cause 2> North Dakotans probably have a large number of rifles as well, so don't fit that profile.

A cynical perspective: schools are prisons, and some lower income gang-joining students are criminals. An extra hour in school corresponds to a criminal spending an extra hour in prison instead of out wreaking havoc. The next question is forcing such students to stay in the school to begin with...

I think "schools are places that give people of a certain age something to do without giving them the option of leaving" is a perfectly valid sentiment and a good description of why more 10 - 14 year olds would perform less crime.

Calling them prisons implies the entire population of students would commit said crimes.

Sounds like something for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation...

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