Should School Go Year Round? Essay

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.

A large portion of the knowledge gained during the last school year is lost over the long idle months and must be retaught for weeks, which wastes a lot of time that could be spent learning new material. This puts students behind in that year’s curriculum, and over many summers, can add up to students being months or years behind where they would be if no learning was lost. There is a solution to this

Year-round schooling could make those vacations more difficult. Even though there is a shorter summer break using year-round schooling, there is still enough time for families to go on a long summer vacation. In fact, because of the way a balanced calendar is set up, there are different opportunities for vacations. In year-round schooling there are multiple breaks after each quarter. These can allow families to go on vacation on seasons other than summer, and have more frequent, smaller breaks during the year (Year-round). The cost for plane tickets and some other expenses of a vacation could be reduced. This could occur because if going on vacation during an offseason, plane tickets are generally less expensive (Year-round). With standard schooling there are times when families want to go on vacation. The problem is that there either is not a break that the family could go during, or the break is not long enough for the vacation the family wants (Flanagan). This causes the student to miss school, and with that tests, lessons, and homework. It can be hard for students to get caught up and fully understand the information that they missed during their time off of school (Flanagan). The frequent break would help with this and make planning vacations more easy. Summer vacationing seems difficult with year-round schooling, but there are actually many

In the article,” The Pros and Cons of Year-Round School” it states that by taking summer away that this could help the students have more time to understand the material. In addition, they say that by taking summer away it helps students not to forget anything that they learn the year prior. This shows that students could excel more in school if summer breaks were gone. Also in the article, “The Pros and Cons of Year-Round School” states that the summer break given to the students is too long. The students have almost nothing to do. Some do go on vacations, but not a lot do. This shows that this would be the prime opportunity to get rid of summer, and do a year round school. Sure people believe that this should happen, but is that really the right way to go

There is controversy over whether or not summer break makes kids forget what they should have previously learned. Coming from myself, a senior in high school, summer break is all about forgetting school and living it up during the duration of the break. This causes teachers to have to pretest students to see what all they actually did remember and then go over the same material trying to get them to remember. With year-round schooling you do not have to worry as much about the loss of learning. The longest break with year-round schooling is three weeks. Any break will causes some memory loss but the three month break that regular schooling provides makes the chances not remembering material increase greatly. Year-round schooling, allows the same

“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.

Gone are the days of children getting off of school to help their family farms during the summer. Now, children as well as the teachers get out for some much needed relaxation. So why do we still follow the same schedule? It seems every school year the discussion of year-round education captures the attention of the general public. Is it time for year-round education (YRE) to be the new norm? Ultimately, there are not that many pros for year-round schooling to be the new thing and the traditional 180-day schedule should be kept.

Year-round schooling is a good idea because it cuts down on the set backs of long breaks. The summer break that everyone knows and loves used to have a different purpose then just swimming in the sun. In the 19th century the children going to school also worked on family farm, so they used this summer “vacation” to help get ready for the winter months. (McFadden and McMahon) Now that there is less farming families schools do not have to worry about that. By the end of the year, YRS

Year round schooling should be a thing. The time we leave school and go back to school is crazy now we get about a month off and when we leave we forget everything we have learned the past year. Its preposterous and repetitive, why forget everything we learned and struggle to relearn it when we could just stay in school. Most kids are against it because they don't want to lose their summer vacation but when it comes down to it, you'd get more time off and more breaks if you had year round schooling anyway.

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

According to the National Association for Year-Round Education, students will be able to advance more rapidly if they did year-round schooling. A by-product of summer break is the dividing of classes based on age. If schooling was year-round, there would be less distinction between one year and the next. This only teaches us to work with people from our generation. If we had year-round schooling we could advance quicker and work with people from different generations, just like how it would be in the future with jobs. Also, the constant learning environment takes away the emphasis of when the student started school and instead emphasizes skill

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

Some schools in the United States have been switching to a year round school calendar instead of the traditional school calendar. How would children in the USA feel if their school year became year round? The year round schedule dictates schools use a 45-15 schedule in which every 45 days students get a 15 day break including weekends. Unlike the traditional calendar, which includes 60 days of summer break, holidays and weekends. Students and parents won't be able to do activities or vacation together using the year round schedule. The traditional school calendar is better than the year round school schedule.

As a student, this issue affects me immensely as I experience the results firsthand. From personal experience, I can say that year-round schooling is much better because after every summer, my peers and I tend to forget most of what we’ve learned, causing teachers to spend valuable teaching time to review with us. I also believe that during the many days that we have summer vacation; we could learn a lot more. Although many people view summer vacation as a time to spend valuable time with family, from