Time is the missing element in our great national debate about learning and the need for higher standards for all students. Our schools and the people involved with the students, teachers, administrators, parents, and staff are prisoners of time, captives of the school clock and calendar. We have been asking the impossible of our students, that they learn as much as their foreign peers while spending only half as much time in core academic subjects. The reform movement of the last decade is destined to founder unless it is harnessed to more time for learning.

A fascinating insight in to the thinking and strategic planing of the US federal Education Commission. While I have a fundamental argument with their position of "core academic" days, the general consideration of redesigning "education so that time becomes a factor supporting learning, not a boundary marking its limits".

http://www.emich.edu/public/emu_programs/tlc/toc.html

Quite an amazing report, with recommendations that Ibelieve begin to truly challenge the single greatest impediment to learning reform: Time and our concept or organised learning.

The commission offered eight recommendations to put time at the top of the US's reform agenda:

I. Reinvent Schools around Learning, not Time.

II. Fix the Design Flaw: Use Time in New and Better Ways.

III. Establish an Academic Day.

IV. Keep Schools Open Longer to Meet the Needs of Children and Communities.

V. Give Teachers the Time They Need.

VI. Invest in Technology.

VII. Develop Local Action Plans To Transform Schools.

VIII. Share the Responsibility: Finger Pointing and Evasion Must End.