By Ben Velderman
EAGnews.org

FALL RIVER, Mass. – Students in Massachusetts’s Fall River school district will see their school year increase by 160 hours beginning this fall.

Their current school year is already 140 hours longer than average, which means a year from now, Fall River students will have spent 300 more hours in class than many of their Bay State peers.

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It’s a trend that’s catching on nationwide. Fall River is one of 40 districts in five states that have agreed to supersize their school year by 300 hours.

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicts the experiment will yield impressive learning benefits, which “will compel the country to act in a very different way.”

Phil Rumore, union boss for the Buffalo Teachers Federation, doesn’t agree.

More class time will just equal more work for his members. Rumore would rather see money spent to hire more teachers, which in turn would increase the number of dues-paying union members.

“More of the same doesn’t get you anywhere,” Rumore said, according to WBEN.com. “ … You have to do things to help students learn and teachers teach and extra time doesn’t do it.”

Instead, Rumore wants the extra money the states spend on longer school years to be used on class size reductions.

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“We need to reduce class sizes. We need more attendance teachers to make sure more students are in school, and we also have to start providing more services to students who are falling behind, especially in the early stages,” Rumore said, according to the news site.

Rumore’s argument sounds very compelling at first – until taxpayers understand that anytime a union leader calls for “smaller class sizes,” it’s really done with the intention of hiring more teachers and creating more dues-paying union members.

Research shows there’s nothing magical about creating smaller class sizes, if the classes are still being led by inept and ineffective teachers.

In education, quality trumps quantity. That goes for teacher quality as well as extra class time.

“Changing the school schedule doesn’t mean, on its own, that there’s going to be more time on task,” Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the National Center on Time and Learning, recently told the Boston Globe.

“It’s not a guarantee of success, but if you look at the schools that use time well, they are dramatically improving.”