The Eight Hour Day?.

The NYT has an article on what various US states are doing to lengthen the school day. I used to be a big fan of this plan (I think the PM still is), but the results from the class size literature make me more hesitant. Basically, we now know that reducing class size has diminishing marginal benefits, but constant marginal costs, and therefore that it isn’t sensible to keep reducing class sizes once they drop below the mid-20s. Similarly, it might be the case that lengthening the school day has diminishing marginal benefits (and the marginal costs are sure to be constant, if not increasing). So beyond 6 hours, it might be the case that it simply isn’t economically sensible to go for a longer day. Still, I’d like to see some research on the

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