Do American Students Need More Time in School?

I have very mixed feelings on the topic of whether or not American students need more time in school. On one hand, I do think that students need to spend more time in school and learn all year around, but on the other hand, I genuinely think that students need to relax and just be kids. While you are young, you should be able to enjoy it. When you eventually have a full time job, summer is just something you look at from a window in your office, but summer when you are a kid means camp, swimming, outdoors, and fun! There is no reason to deny kids of this. They spend 180 days a year in classrooms learning. This does not seem like a lot of time, but if you factor in that they are only learning how to prep for a test, then it really is a long time. Schools now do not focus on actually teaching the curriculum, they focus on making sure the students will pass the standardized test that they need to take in April of every year. When I think back to May and June of K-12, I remember having movie days and teachers not actually caring about the course work because we had already taken our standardized tests. Then when September came around, it was back to test prep and craziness. It is said now that the average kindergartener in New York is given about three hours of homework for test prep a night. My question is, when is it time for this student to be a kid? If we take away summer, yes maybe there will be slightly higher test scores, but is it fair to take away from a students childhood? There is no reason for a five year old to spend six hours in school and then another three at home doing work and then going to bed shortly after that. It is unfair to expect that this student will succeed and fully excel because they are going to be tired of it all. Kids need time to just be kids sometimes. If they are constantly stressed at such a young age, they are going to end up with anxiety disorders, and more kids will be diagnosed with ADHD and ADD because they will never have time to go outside and enjoy life. It is not okay to expect that students will want to do this and can actually handle it. It will also be a lot more expensive to operate the schools over the summer. Most schools do not have air conditioning, so it will be unbearably hot inside the classrooms. They will probably have to install air conditioning, which will cost a lot as well as running the air conditioning. They will also have to pay the teachers more to stay at school during the summer since it is their job and taxes with either go up or they are going to have to fire more teachers in order to pay for the teachers during the summer. Many school districts have already fired a large number of teachers and it has become hard enough to teach the students because there are too many of them. I do not think that extending school would be a good idea.