If you buy; that you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.

How can you buy that taking him there more times, sooner
will make him drink?

The leadership of the APS has extended the school year for
disadvantaged students. link

The solution, however good it feels, is specious.

Any gain shown by those students by means of "testing"
will disappear over the next three years; they will be
indistinguishable from the rest of the kids in their class.


More time in school is not the answer, because the problem
is not that students do not spend enough time in school;

it is that while there,
they do not want to learn.

We should be paying attention to the fact that students
are not willing and excited participants in their education.

Too often, they are not even cooperative in their education.

And when that problem is finally laid on the table for public discussion,

we just might find a way to get kids excited about school again.


In the mean time we will do things that look good
in order to keep stakeholders happy.

We will create the impression that "test scores" will improve
if we just keep doing the same thing, more times, sooner.