I would agree with a year-round school year. A long summer break, during which kids can forget everything they've learned and lose good study habits, is no longer needed. But I strongly disagree with adding more days to the school year and I disagree with a longer school day. The number of days should not be increased, but the current number of days should simply be spread out more evenly throughout the year. More money to schools rarely, if ever, helps anything. And studies have shown that for countries in which students excel it has much more to do with the culture, values, and motivation, and little if anything to do with the amount of time spent in school. More time in bad schools will just make things worse... more time for the disruptive students to hold everyone else back, when they could be getting out of the schools to go to the library or surf the Web and actually learn something on their own. A longer school day and year is nothing but a veiled attempt by this power-grabbing government administration to grab even more power. It would increase opportunities for indoctrinating our children, removing them futher from the influences of parents and family, and it would provide another excuse for claiming that the schools now need even more money (even though more money never works) which in turn gives the government an excuse to raise taxes thereby giving the government more power, taking money from those it chooses and to re-distribute it to those that the government deems worthy of receiving it. It also gives the federal government even more power to dictate education policy over the states. (Central planning is a bad idea... remember the Soviet Union anyone?) User philipgar hit the nail right on the head in his post. The federal government ostensibly is not *officially* in control, but they take even more money from the people and then blackmail the states by withholding it to pressure the states into doing what the federal government wants. The end result is that the federal government gains even more power and control. A longer school year would also provide yet another opportunity for lazy, irresponsible people to abdicate yet more of their own personal responsibility and freedoms to the government so that they do not need to be bothered by it themselves and then they get to whine, point fingers, and shift blame to the government when things go wrong. It will provide people with what amounts to more taxpayer-funded child care, allowing parents to have their kids herded onto buses and brought to school for even longer periods of time so they can work even longer to earn more money so that they can give their children more "stuff" (but even less of their time), while reducing the amount of time for which they must be (*gasp*) personally responsible for, and interact with, their own children. Smaller government is better, people. I don't care what political party affiliation you are... people who want big government are always happy when the government is doing things with which they agree... but it will not always be that way. Eventually people will be elected who want to do things with which you disagree and then what happens? ... once power is ceded by the people to the government it is much, much more difficult to take that power back again.