Notes: • President Barack Obama said Tuesday that American children should go to school longer — either stay later in the day or into the summer — if they're going to have any chance of competing for "That calendar may have once made sense, but today, it puts us at a competitive disadvantage. Our children spend over a month less in school than children in South Korea. That is no way to prepare them for a 21st Century economy." jobs and paychecks against foreign kids. • He urged administrators to "rethink the school day" to add more class time • "Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us," Obama said. "In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place. Singapore's middle-schoolers outperform ours three to one. Just a third of our 13- and 14-year olds can read as well as they should." • MSNBC: Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe. • "Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas," the president said earlier this year. "Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom." • "Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press[pic] • While it is true that kids in many other countries have more school days,