Longer school days are a HORRIBLE idea. Kids can barely concentrate from 8 to 3. I can barely concentrate that long!

But summer breaks are an antiquated idea whose time as long passed. Originally when we were an agricultural nation and every kid was needed on the farm during the warm months, it made sense. Kids were out of school because they were working 16 hours per day in their family's fields. But that hasn't been the case in the country since the Industrial Revolution.

Now parents work away from home, and families live in urban area. Kids are unsupervised and bored for three months, and so much more apt to get in trouble. In most towns, the number of summer jobs available is far less than the number of kids out of school.

Many cities have shown a dramatic drop in the summer juvenile crime rate and a dramatic increase in graduation rates and SAT/ACT scores after going to year long school.