The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies

by Erik Brynjolfsson

Part of the bargain should also be longer school hours, longer school years, more after-school activities and more opportunities for preschool education. Studies of successful charter schools by Harvard economist Roland Fryer and others have found that the formula for success is simple, if not easy: longer hours, additional school days, and a no-excuses philosophy that tests students and, implicitly, their teachers.7 This approach has helped Singapore and South Korea do well in the PISA rankings—both rely heavily on standardized tests for children of all ages.8 Lengthening the school year may be especially beneficial for poor kids, since research suggests that rich and poor children learn at a similar rate when school is in session, but that poor children fall behind over the summer when they are not in school.