Leave Those Kids Alone: The Case For Long Summer Vacation

The third reason why we shouldn’t have all year round –schools is because, its tradition to have 180 day’s strait with 3 months of breaks and it gives us more important things to do in the summer. According to Julia Sines, to have a 3-month summer and do more fun activities to do all summer is better than going to school year round. Kids want to go on vacations with their parents. Some athletic kids won’t be able to play travel sports. Scientist say that year round school kids drop out by their senior year (Sines). Most juniors and seniors work in the summer for money for colleges and to save up, but they won’t be able to get money. It’s more American to have 180 straight days with 3-month break. Billee Bussard stated, “It is an idea that has been tried and failed for more than 100 years,” (Sines). So talking to that quote, why would we start now. Kids love going outside and swimming and playing games and making money, but because the kids go to year round schools they only have 3 weeks to do these fun

Also it gives those with less things to do all year round where in the old schedule they would go two months in a half doing nothing. Even some parents see summer vacation as a stressful obstacle to give

Many teachers take graduate classes during the summer vacation period to catch up with new curriculums and advances in technology. Teachers will find attending professional conferences, staff development activities, and college courses more difficult. A teacher who was part of a year round system recounts, "I found myself going through 3 school years without that opportunity for self-assessment and planning for the future of the educational program." ("The Effect of Year Round Schools" 1999/22 February 2005). With a much shorter summer break, teachers will not have enough time to increase their education, which can benefit the learning of their students. For these reasons, year round schools are not as beneficial as the traditional school year.

During summer, many students forget what they learned the year before, and teachers must review material done last year. People in year-round schools believe that because of the shorter breaks, teachers have to spend less time reviewing material, and can move forward in their teaching. According to the National Education Association, “one of the main reasons for switching to year-round schools is to improve with student academics.” Although there is no proof, many schools believe a year-round schedule helps improve students academic skills.

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.

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.

The first reason why kids should have a summer break is that it makes school less complicated. According to Jennifer Brozak, a disadvantage of having a year round school is that the school budget has to increase. They will need to have more fundraisers in order to keep the school going. If they neglect to get the amount of money they need they sometimes cancel and let the students have a summer break. In addition, teachers are having difficulty with planning lessons for students and grading papers in a short amount of time they have (Brozak). In addition, Brozak says, because of the short amount of time teachers have to grade papers they are prone to burnout. This is one of the reasons that schools should have a summer break because both teachers and students’ mental pressure because of work (Brozak). As a student, I can say that breaks will be necessary to recharge and prepare myself

The average school period is one hundred and eighty days with small breaks in between and a three-month break during summer to ease students’ minds and let them relax. The Board of Education should make all schools in the United States year-round to increase educational time and decrease the loss of knowledge over the breaks. It gives students the same time to relax and plan family vacations periodically throughout the year, but never creates the stress of changing sleep schedules that summer break changes. Not only is it a good way to enhance education, but it also is better for planning family events, positive effects on budget, academic achievement, and could decrease the absence rate of students.

Students need time to relax and de-stress. With the accumulation of homework, projects, assignments, tests and quizzes, students are constantly working and have no time to relax. This can be overwhelming, but students still put in the effort just to make it through the year because they know they can rest in the summer. Furthermore, this could cause students to become unmotivated because they will think that they are trapped in a prison in which they are boundlessly doing work and will never meet their own goals. A longer vacation will allow us to clear our minds and open them to new possibilities that would not be possible if we were to follow the same routine every day. Likewise, it is not only the students that need this vacation, but it is also the staff and faculty as well who would definitely rather see their family and friends instead of the students for a whole year. Most of these families go on holidays, but sometimes

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.

Year round school eliminates regression of learning due to extended time off. Having a year round school can reduce what people known as summer learning loss ("The Pros"). Almost every child will experience a decrease in their math over the time of summer break each summer break ("SUMMER LEARNING"). “On an average students lose two months of reading skills over summer” ("SUMMER LEARNING"). After

The three-month summer vacation block may sound great for planning vacations, but in reality, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. By having one large vacation block, parents have to compete in the workplace to get the appropriate time off and travel is more expensive because everyone else is traveling. Year round schooling offers more breaks and more opportunities for everyone to take a well-deserved vacation

This is one reason that we should not have year round school in the United States. Year round schools don't learn any more than the kids in traditional nine month school calendar. The article says,"Students in "year-round" schools don't learn more than their peers in traditional nine-month schools, new research has found." This shows that kids in year round school don't learn any more then kids in the nine month school calendar. If kids don't learn any more than their peers than they shouldn't have to go to year round school. Kids in school deserve to have a summer vacation to hang out with friends and family and to be able to travel.

The problem with year round schools may be that they don’t actually add more school days to 180 typically required said von hipple said. Instead of a three month summer vacation, year round schools typically have several breaks of three to four weeks spread throughout the year.

For many years, girls and boys would go to a year round school, and have breaks certain times of the year to help out at home or on the farm. Now days, only four percent of schools are year round. There are not many things that children have to go home for during the winter or summer anymore. Therefore, it is not a necessity to have summers off. However, having more year round schools, will create and easier life for students.