How many days are really in a school year?

In elementary school everyone had a class that did the countdown of the days of school (180). I always wondered how much time you are not spending in class/learning. Barry Bachenheimer and Karl Fisch have done the hard work and found students "miss" from 60 to 65 days of class each year due to pep rallies, guest speakers, state exams, final exams ect. This was a lot more than i thought. Mr. Bachenheimer actually estimated time spent in the class learning was 46 hours a year on average.

I agree to this to a certain extent but not all lessons learned in school come from the classroom. Guest speakers educate kids on not smoking, not doing drugs and sex education. And you have to count that towards education. Don't you? I think this list should of included field trips. They were great, but you didn't learn much. You were just going to see what you already learned about. Thats kind of like exam review days, which I'm still debating if it should be included or not. I have included a link to this blog below.

"180 Days?"