That's just empty rhetoric bullshit language meant to condemn anything with which one disapproves without having to prove the merits of the assertion.

What, if you would be so kind, is outdated about the practice of giving students time away from school for the full summer? What specific societal changes or technological advancements have taken place that would invalidate that practice?

I wonder, given the easy and ready access to information afford by telecommunications and advances in computers, why people are pushing to increase the time students are crammed together in one place for learning. Why not do away with the classrooms altogether? With the enormous drain on municipal and city budgets, the apparently escalating risk of gun violence, and in many cases, the near certainty of being socialized to the lowest common denominator, i.e. introducing them to substance abuse and criminal activity, the advances in communication technology increasingly support the possibility of telecommuting to school. Teacher whine about class size, asserting the greater supervision of children, the better their education, but couldn't a parent with intimate personal knowledge of their children do a far better job of supervising them and overseeing their education, than a stranger they met less than nine months ago, and who has 20-30 others to supervise at the same time.

Of course, there is Obama's nonsensical myth about the old school year being based on agricultural cycles, but one is then left to wonder why children were sent to school during the spring planting and fall harvesting, and kept home during the period of least intensive work.

The idea that more school time is beneficial is one floated entirely by the teachers and their organizations, without benefit of any sort empirical testing, merely the consensus of... more teachers and educational professionals, all of whom stand to benefit from it financially and in prestige and control.

Three people are involved in any child's education, the child, the parent and the teacher, and the least important (not to mention mercenary and financially-interested) one, with the least motivation and interest in the child's well-being, is the one on which all efforts to improve education are focused, and to whom most credibility is given.

Shitty schools are that way because they are attended by ill-raised children from badly parented families, not from any dearth of time, funds or outside support.