How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On The Farm

Schools out for summer, schools out forever.
Great rock lyrics but think about it when you drive by your local school on your way to work. There's a building standing empty still costing us money every day and there's nothing happening. Let's make a Wal-Mart analogy, how long do you think the supergiant would last if they closed up for 3 months in the summer, how long would ANY business last that did this? How does a long summer vacation prepare our kids for the world of work unless they are planning on becoming teachers that is.
It is known by all that the USA ranks pretty low in math, science and reading in the world amongst other industrialized nations, it is also plain as day that we spend more on education than these same industrialized nations.
We are locked into an antiquated system of education that is in dire need of reform.
We need:
1.Teacher compensation based on performance (like the world of work)
2. Less administration at lower cost (like private schools)
3. Spread the school year out through the summer and increase the number of days to a minimum of 240 (like high achieving countries do) I have heard teachers say this many times in the faculty room, they are tired of so much instructional time being lost to review at the beginning of each school year. Make it happen.

The notion of children needing the summer off is rooted in faulty turn of the 19th century science and here we are locked in to this old thinking in the 21st they are neither frail nor needed on the farm, the schools are well ventilated and rooms without windows are air conditioned. It is time to step forward and stop the hand wringing and piling on of more worthless initiative's eat a little humble pie and look to the other industrialized nations models of success.