The echo of the final school bell is still fresh in our minds, a perfect time, I think, to champion one of my favorite causes.

Our children need a longer school year.

In some circles this is not a particularly popular idea. In fact, when I wrote about this many moons ago, I was flooded with letters -- yes, back in the day it was snail mail -- decrying my lack of sensitivity for children who need down time to be . . . well, to be just children.

Oh, please. Do the kiddies really need three months of summer vacation, most of it spent playing video games, attending summer camp (sometimes a euphemism for fancy babysitting) and hanging out in front of an open refrigerator? I don't think so.

These days, though, pushing for a longer school year is akin to asking the boss for a pay raise. Chances are I'll get laughed right out the recessionary door. School districts around the country have cut programs and laid off teachers. How are we going to fund an initiative that obviously will require more money?

Can you say federal stimulus? Can you spell i-n-v-e-s-t-m-e-n-t?

American students have the shortest school year of children in any developed country -- a piddling 180 days compared to an average of 195 for European countries, Australia, Canada and others. In East Asia, kids spend about 200 days in school. By the time ours graduate, that 15-day-a-year difference translates into an entire school year.

What's more, our kids attend school fewer hours than others: 32 hours a week. In comparison, it's 60 hours in Sweden, 53 in Denmark and 37 in relatively relaxed Luxembourg. Aggravating the learning time deficit is that lo-o-o-ng stretch of summer where children tend to lose academic skills.

It's not news that our students perform poorly compared to their peers from developed countries, but it should be alarming that the gap has increased over the years. Even our top performers are bested by top performers in other countries, and the inequality among groups is higher in the United States than elsewhere. In other words, socioeconomic gaps in learning are smaller in top-performing educational systems than they are in the United States. As a result, half of community college freshmen and a third of freshmen at four-year colleges need remedial instruction.

Stretching the time our children spend at school is one way of stopping the downward spiral, and politicians on both sides of the aisle are finally recognizing that. President Obama has told educators our students need to be in school longer. Arne Duncan, his secretary of education, agrees.

''Our children are not competing for jobs down the block or in the district or in the state -- they're competing against children in India or China, and they need to know how they stack up,'' Duncan said earlier this month.

Of course a longer school year is not the magic bullet. Neither is throwing money at the problem. Practicing the wrong score won't produce the expected symphony. Besides, studies have shown that our students perform poorly despite the fact that the United States has a high income per capita -- usually correlated with higher level of achievement -- and spends more on education than other countries.

A longer school year is simply one solution to a very complicated problem. What and how we teach is important, too, as is parents stressing the importance of education at home.

The hazy, lazy days of summer beckon, yes, but it's time our children spend some of those in the classroom.

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