Benefits Of Double School Vacations

Year round education (YRE) is implemented in 436 U.S. school districts with very few complaints. In fact, school districts that have been participating in YRE and extended school days (ESD) are raving about the benefits in pupil's achievement level, their new found enthusiasm in learning, as well as the many programs that exist in the extended day promoting the decline in latch key children.

Summer break is supposed to be a time of rest and rejuvenation for students. After nine months of hard work and challenging classes, one would think such a long break could do nothing but good for students; however, this is not the best way for young minds to learn. A three month break is far too long for children to go without proper education and supervision. Instead of a long three month break at the end of each school year, why not give students the same number of days off but spread them out more frequently throughout the year? Year-round education is a more efficient, globally competitive, and fair alternative to the traditional nine month school year.

Have you ever thought about how year-round schooling can be beneficial to students? In today’s society, many school districts have been switching from a standard school year to year-round schooling. Year-round schools follow the basic 180 day school year, but the days are more spread out throughout the year following the 45-15 method. Forty five days of school, followed by fifteen day breaks. Year-round schooling is beneficial to many because it prevents students from gaining unwanted weight and causes less stress for teachers and students.

Some advantages of year-round schooling include improved achievement, improved attendance by both teachers and students, reduced discipline problems, lower teacher stress, increased motivation due to frequent breaks, and increased opportunities for enrichment (Palmer and Bemis). During the two week breaks in between school sessions, students have the opportunity to take classes on karate, ballet, photography, cooking, and swimming. This intersession provides time for hands-on, big project classes that get kids involved in topics that interest them. Intersession can also be used as an intervention for students who are falling behind. “Karl Alexander, sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, studied 800 students for more than 20 years in Baltimore’s elementary schools. He found that by ninth grade, low-income students had fallen 3 ½ grade levels behind their middle-class peers. And most of that gap was attributable to learning lost over the long traditional summer” (Schulte, 2009). The biggest driving force and proponent of year-round schooling is the effect of the “summer slide.” Students lose two months of achievement in math skills and students from low-income families lose more than two months in reading achievement according to the national Summer Learning

“The U.S. research challenges one of the main arguments for abandoning conventional schedules: year- round schooling improves achievement because it prevents students from falling behind during the summer and because it does not waste precious time reviewing past years’ lessons”

In his article “Go Year-Round: A Push for True Summer School”, Milton Chen, the executive director of Edutopia, urges readers to use the year-round schooling system. He explains in brief words what the summer vacation was for. “…when farm families needed young people home during the summer months to replace the three R's with the two P's -- plantin' and pickin' " (Chen). He carries on discussing that the problem with the school days is not only the amount, but the schedule of the school day. The curriculum is too tight; neither the students nor the teachers have the time to step away from the books and text and learn from the outside. The students do not have the chance to go into the outside world and observe what is going on in the society that they live in. Additionally, the teachers do not have the chance to decide how their time is spent because it is spent on the strict schedule of the classroom.

Year round schooling may sound scary but read this and I might change your mind. Year round school is pretty much what is sounds like, except it is the same amount of school days as a regular year, and it has more spread out breaks. Year round school would be beneficial because it consist of less review due to “summer slide”, more “family time”, and longer more spread out breaks.

Imagine a school year that gave the students one week off after every quarter and every Friday off. Does this sound exciting and rich with possibilities? Then ask the superintendent of the school district to consider year round school with only four days per week.First, students would not forget what they learned over the long summer. Next, parents would not have to get day care except on Fridays instead of the whole summer. Finally, teachers and students would have better relationships as they spend more time together instead of being rushed. Let’s take a look at some proof.

Year-round schooling is characterized by its 45-90 day periods of instruction (varying with different multitrack systems) separated by 15-30 day breaks (varying with different multitrack systems) (California Department of Education). There is no current scientific evidence to show that year-round education lessens the amount of material forgotten during the summer (McMillen 68); in fact, this memory loss is maximized as it occurs more frequently as it accompanies the shorter, habitual breaks. Constant breaks can also multiply some of summer’s negative effects. One common issue associated with summer is students’ loss of focus as summer approaches and trouble becoming accustomed to the beginning of the following school year (Worsnop 439). This would be a, though minimized, a recurring difficulty with constant breaks. Furthermore, teachers

Anaheim High School, a beautiful campus filled with intelligent students all around. You may tell yourself that but do we really have some of the best grades? Anaheim has too many days off for vacation and not enough school time for students to learn. In order to increase student success at Anaheim, we should have longer class periods so that students understand the material without having to be rushed and start class earlier or extend school release time until 3:30 or 4:00 pm. In the article, “Marita’s Bargain" by Malcolm Gladwell, he states, “The day goes from seven twenty-five until five pm” (9). Students at KIPP Academy are starting their classes at seven twenty-five and get out of class at five pm. They are getting longer classes which allows them to focus on their academics without having to be rushed to move onto the next topic. Anaheim High School is struggling with students being rushed and not understanding the

While some might enjoy a three-month long summer break, it is in the best interest of the students’ grades to attend school all year long since this leads to a more motivated classroom atmosphere. Also, the students are more likely to remember material covered in class better if they are only gone six weeks instead of twelve weeks for the summer. As a result of retaining the material, students will benefit from better test scores. According to the NAYRE, “of thirteen studies of year-round-education performance since 1985…ten favored the year-round system over traditional schools and of those, seven found statistically significant learning gains by the year-round students” (Harp 2). The world we live in is becoming more of a global market, and American students need to be able to compete in the job market someday with people from all over. Their test scores and skills need to be cutting edge in order to be an active participant in this global market.

One of the most documented reasons for switching to a year round school is what’s known as the “summer slide.” Students leave spring semester after taking their exams and don’t think about school for almost 12 weeks. These students then come back in the fall not only failing at subjects they knew three months prior, but in dire need of having the foundations re taught to them. This forces teachers to spend valuable class time re-teaching lessons, which dips into class time that should be used for grade appropriate lessons. In her article, O’Sulivan theorizes, “the less times students are away from school, the less time teachers will have to spend reviewing material from the previous year and acclimating students to classroom rules and procedures”.

The minute that everybody has been expecting for has at long last arrived. The people are inclining toward the edge of their seats, listening for the last chime to ring to unleash them to freedom. We all love it when summer vacation has arrived, but the time just passes by so fast. A high percentage of the students want there to be a longer summer vacation, but are there really any benefits? Well yes in fact a longer vacation will be associated with many benefits such as increased social life, health benefits, and educational plus financial gains.

According to a report from the New York City district, a school that received funds for longer days fared better on standardized tests. This school had seven percent more students scoring at or above grade level in reading, when two other schools had increases of five and six percent. In math, three percent of students scored at or above grade level in a school with a longer day, compared with one percent for a low performing school and an average of one percent for other schools (Brett 1). This information is one example of many studies that illustrate that long school days have a great positive impact on school performance. The main school goals are improving students’ knowledge and building different skills that will help them in the future. Therefore, if longer school days support these educational goals, people should be concerned about improving schools by lengthening the day.

There are many problems in Anaheim High School that we can fix, but the most important one is to get students more intelligent and we can do that by having longer school days. In order to increase student success at Anaheim Schools, we need to have longer school days. “The school year in the United States is on average 180 days long. The Japanese school year is 243 days long.” This is a quote from the story Marita’s Bargain that shows that students from other countries have more and longer school days. This is one of the reasons students are doing better at school. “Saturdays they come in nine to one. In the summer, it’s eight to two.” This is another quote from the story Marita’s Bargain and it is also telling us that they even go to Saturday school. So this means that instead of going to school 5