Presidential commissions, parents, academics, and employers have proposed the same solutions, again and again, for fixing the time students spend in school: (1) Add more days to the annual school calendar; (2) Change to year-round schools; (3) Add instructional time to the daily schedule; and (4) Extend the school day. Three reasons--cost, lackluster research, and the importance of conservative social goals to U.S. taxpayers and voters--explain why proposals to fix time in U.S. schools have failed to take hold during the last quarter century. State and federal blue-ribbon commissions will continue to make proposals about lengthening time in school. The author contends that those proposals will make headlines, but they will not result in serious, sustained attention to what really matters--improving the quality of the time that teachers and students spend with one another in and out of classrooms. (Contains 25 notes.)