Why Longer School Days Work for Families

By Rhonda Present

As school districts across the nation have scaled back instructional hours and moved to four-day weeks to balance their budgets, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is forging ahead with his push for a longer school day and year. And, though his plan is stirring controversy on many fronts, if implemented well, it stands to benefit students and another group largely missing from the discussion: their families.

Things have changed a lot in the homes of American schoolchildren over the past 50 years or so. There are more two-income households, more single parents raising families, and more mothers in the paid labor force. The days of June Cleaver waiting to greet the school bus each afternoon with a plate of warm cookies and a nice, cold glass of milk are pretty much over, assuming they ever existed at all.

But you wouldn’t know it by taking a glance at...