Going to school from 8 am until 5 pm may sound terrible,but Sydney Shaw,a seventh grader at the Alain Locke Charter Academy on Chicago's West Side,has come to like it--as well as the extra 20 or so days that she's in class every year."I'm sure every kid at this school says bad things about the schedule sometimes,"says Sydney, who was at school on Columbus Day, when most Chicago schools had a holiday."But we all know it's for our benefit." Finding ways to give kids more classroom time,through longer hours,a longer school year,or both,is getting more attention."If you want to look at schools where the achievement gap is narrowing, they're saying they couldn't do it without the added time,"says Jennifer Davis."Even when you get good teachers into schools,you also need more time." According to studies, low-income students fall back more than two months in their reading skills over summer vacations."It's over the summer months that poor kids fall behind,"says Karl Alexander,a sociologist."If you have parents who themselves didn't succeed at school and aren't highly educated,kids aren't going to get those skills at home." Schools are asked to take a full year to plan how to best use the extra time--a process involving teachers,principals,students and parents.They are given outside support to help them base their plans on the best available analyses of student needs.It's still early,but officials are already seeing stronger test scores and a narrowing achievement gap. But some critics are worried."We risk producing something that's very expensive and time-consuming, and that will give educators a lot of trouble,"says Frederick Hess."Before we spend all that extra money,I'd much rather see if we can figure out how to get 50 percent more instructional time out of the current school day." The text is mainly about  _  .
whether a longer school day will help narrow the achievement gap how students have benefited from additional school hours why the achievement gap among students needs to be narrowed what causes the achievement gap among students