Name: ____________________________________________
6B- _____
Date: ________________________________
ELA: ELA Practice  Reading, Short Answers, & Essay:
NYT’s Room for Debate: Extend the School Day?
Directions: USE PENCIL. Read the following short essays about extending the
school day, taken from the September 26th edition of Room for Debate in The New
York Times. (This document does not include most of the original essays.) After
reading each essay, respond to the short answer question that follows it. Then use
the information from both of the essays to help you answer the essay question.
Help for Parents and Society by Geoffrey Canada
Geoffrey Canada is president and chief executive officer of the Harlem Children’s Zone and president of the Harlem Children’s Zone
Promise Academy Charter Schools.
The evidence keeps mounting that America is no longer a leader when it comes to
educating its children. The perilous situation is exposed with each new report on the
data. The National Assessment of Educational Progress shows little improvement over
the decades. The black-white achievement gap is as wide as ever. SAT scores (college
entrance exams) are declining. I am convinced that one of the reasons is that the school
day and year are too short. Without additional time, it is virtually impossible for students
behind grade level  particularly poor and minority students  to catch up.
Longer school days can lead to fewer crimes committed by young people and a decline in
teen pregnancy.
An extended school day gives administrators the ability to ensure children get a wellrounded education. Many schools today are sacrificing social studies, the arts and
physical education so children can cover basic subjects like math, English and science.
This is hurting children across America, depriving them of the chance to find discipline
and self-expression through the arts; and we should be ashamed to cut physical education
while our children face an obesity epidemic.
Extending the school day would also help families. In two-parent households, women
have increasingly entered the workplace, and in single-parent households, there is even
more of a need for the adults to work. That means parents do not fully control their own
schedule and have to scramble to find high-quality after-school options.
What happens when children are not engaged in enriching activities is well-documented:
crimes committed by youth in the hours immediately after school soar, as do teen
pregnancies. These hours can either provide an opportunity for children to grow or to get
bored and drift into self-destructive behavior.
Meanwhile, our global competitors are keeping students in school longer, giving them a
better shot at success. Failing to do our best to educate all of America’s children is a
mistake that will hurt this country for years to come.
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1. Short Answer Question: What does Canada think about longer school days?
Provide two specific, text-based details to support your answer.
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2.
Quality vs. Time in the Classroom by Vicki Abeles
Vicki Abeles is a filmmaker, lawyer and mother of three. She is the co-director and producer of the documentary Race to Nowhere:
The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture.
Many of our children are already stretched to unhealthy breaking points, loaded down
with excessive homework, extracurricular activities and outside tutoring because
they’re led to believe high test scores, a slew of Advanced Placement classes and a
packed résumé (list of accomplishments) are their ticket to college and success. This has
led to an epidemic (widespread problem) of anxious, unhealthy, sleep-deprived
(exhausted), burned-out, disengaged (uninvolved, disinterested), unprepared children 
and overwhelmed and discouraged teachers.
I have found no compelling (powerful, convincing) research that supports the
proposition (suggestion) that a longer school day improves educational outcomes. One
only has to look at countries like Finland, where students achieve higher test scores with
less instruction time and less homework than in our country. The real issue is the quality
of the education we’re providing, not the amount of hours spent in a classroom.
We need healthier, more balanced, more engaging and effective school days, not longer
ones.
Young people need time outside of school to develop as whole people. They need time to
grow creatively, physically, socially and emotionally, not just academically. A large part
of a child’s learning occurs outside the classroom, through play, reading, family
dinnertime interaction, community participation, volunteering and working part-time
jobs. Instead of lengthening the school day, we should invest resources so that children in
every community have access to opportunities for after-school programs offering arts,
sports and other activities that support the growth of the whole child, as well as working
parents.
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Further, by ensuring that school work is completed at school where there are teachers to
support learning  alleviating (relieving, lightening, easing) the “second shift” for
children and working parents created by homework  we can enhance (improve,
strengthen, add to) the education of our children and the well-being of children and
families.
The key is creating a healthier, more balanced, more engaging and effective school day,
not a longer one.
2. Short Answer Question: What does Abeles think about longer school days?
Provide two specific, text-based details to support your answer.
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3. Essay Question: Using IBC form, write a well-written, well-organized, welldeveloped essay in which you name the possible pros and cons of lengthening the school
day for American students, according to Geoffrey Canada and Vicki Abeles. Use
specific, text-based details from both of the previous essays to support your answer.
After you’ve written your essay, use the boxes below to check your work:
☐ Named the pros (strengths, advantages, benefits) of a longer school day
☐ Named the cons (weaknesses, disadvantages, problems) of a longer
school
day
☐ Used specific text-based details from both essays (Canada’s and Abeles’)
Planning Page (Use a simple outline to plan your essay here.)
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Use your outline to help you write your essay on the lines that follow...
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