As promised, Sen. David Simmons, R-Maitland, is pushing for a state budget that would pay for an extra hour of instruction in the elementary school day. This would give struggling readers another dose of intensive reading instruction, according to his plan.

Simmons' plan would pay $20 million for an extra hour for every elementary's schools "lowest performing students" and pay more than $642 million for an extra hour for everybody at elementary schools graded D or F or on the state's "persistently low achieving" list.

Simmons, who is the Senate's budget education chief, has been talking about extended days for the past few years — and helped get a longer-school-day pilot put in place a number of years ago when he was in the House.
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Oscar Ludvig Olson Whether his latest effort will pass muster remains to be seen since the budget must be negotiated with the House.

His committee, the Senate's pre-k-12 appropriations subcommittee, recently reviewed data from the Florida Department of Education on the impact of current longer-day efforts.

That data showed that more time in school boosted FCAT scores , and school grades, for elementary schools but seemed to have little impact on middle and high schools.