Students In Year-Round Schools

Year-round schools have gained popularity among the United States, being a very communicated topic within middle class communities. These schools are generally argued about by whether they are beneficial or not. While there are many advantages to year-round schools, there are some disadvantages as well. A few of these disadvantages include the expenses of the schools, the schedules the schools provide, the involvement within the schools, and the actual effectiveness of these schools.

Year round schooling is better than regular school because, it allows the kids to retain more information and not lose what they learned, they also allow them to graduate earlier with higher retention levels. In discussion of Year Round Schooling, one controversial issue has been whether year round schooling is a good idea or not. People believe that year round schooling is a good thing and that it will increase academic achievement levels and benefit the students more than anything else. Students will also be able to advance more quickly since the schooling is year round, they have less to forget since the breaks are shorter. On the other hand people seem to believe that year round schooling takes away from the students and gives them less family time and less of an “Outside of school life” (NEA). In the research of year round schooling it shows that absences are most likely to be higher since it is year round. Their view is that we think that many students can benefit from year round schooling, and that is has more benefits than anything else.

Imagine a school year that never ends. A year without summer, relaxation, and vacations with family. Summer is the time of year that every student cannot wait arrive. But what if the playful time filled with friends, smiles, and laughter did not exist? What if school remained in session year-round? This is happening in 3,181 schools across America and is gradually increasing (edweek.org). The government calls it: Year-Round School. There are both many pros and cons to this controversial issue in today’s education; however, Year-Round School is not a good decision because of the social outcomes, the financial costs, and the academic effects that Year-Round School burdens on the students.

Mathew Lynch in Huff Post Education says “The Summer months are typically the highest ones for energy consumption. In fact, the average electricity bill for homeowners in the summer months goes up 4 to 8 percent, the same concept would be true of schools. Having empty classrooms in the summer months means less money going out to air conditioning and prevents other warm-weather costs from hitting school utility budgets.” Personally I couldn’t agree with that more. If the school board switches to the Year-Round schooling we will be wasting more money that this school doesn’t

If that is the case, then it would be more money to run schools year-round. My question about that point is this. What do the studies show, regarding year-round school quality of education to the amount of money spent in the additional months? Are the grades 25 percent better with the additional money spent? That is one reason why I disagree with Amy McDonald when she stated that it would save schools money to do school year-round. Heating a school in the coldest part of the year when there is a Holiday and cooling the school in the hottest time of the year cost a lot of money. I know my parents talk about the power and heating bills a lot here at home and hour home is a lot smaller than the school. The reason Amy used as her example was that it would be less money to not do year-round school, and not need to pay extra money for summer school. I would say that would be about the same amount of money. It is harder for students that don't have enough money to pay tuition for college if they can't get a summer job. Without summer jobs some students won't be able to attend college. I believe that Nick's letter was the best out of the two because of the reasons I gave and many

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”

Believe it or not keeping a school open costs quite a bit of money. If schools are open longer the maintenance costs go up about 10% more. Many people believe that having school year-round education may be cheaper but it certainly does not guarantee savings. These costs may add up and in turn interfere with budgets for other programs that are already struggling with funding such as sports, music, arts and other programs funded by the state. Also lets not forget air conditioning is not free. With today's current economy most students have to pay for their collage and in result get summer jobs or part-time jobs to raise money. Year-round schooling could make it difficult for students to keep jobs and save their money. Low income families can get hurt in this situation. Lastly, teachers must be paid for all the weeks they are working, with all these factors the cost of keeping schools open skyrockets. In Tempe, AZ, a high school experienced an increase of $157,000 per

Single-track schools, which can make up as much as 87% of year-round schools in areas such as North Carolina, “cost as much or more than traditional school programs” (McMillen 68). The expenses that contribute to this are costs such as the salaries for auxiliary educators to replace those who have chosen to go on break (California Department of Education). While teachers are on break, other educators will most likely be using the classroom, leaving teachers struggling to find ways to store larger educational tools such as posters, student work from previous years, etc. and end up looking to the school to provide storage accommodations. In conjunction with these regular payments, there would also be lengthier maintenance work, which would be very challenging to carry out when there are constantly students in session (California Department of Education). Additional expenses could also include temperature control and food costs, which would be greater due to full year usage. The monetary effects of year round school could also be significant on a moderately broader scale. “In 2000, Texas found the economic costs of starting school in early August totaled US$370 million in lost summer employment, lowered tourism spending, and additional air conditioning costs.” (“Leave Those Kids” 5). Loss of tourism and summer employment

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

“It’s for the public it’s year round and it 's also for the schools because we 're going to re-establish our school programs and all our outreach programs” Susan Hayward. Will year round schooling help or benefit the schools of the United States and society? Year round schools could change the reasons why teachers are teaching ("Top 10 Reasons"). Elimination of extended breaks from schools in the United States. would be beneficial to the population.

To begin with, year round schools cost to much. In the essay the author states that a high school in Arizona had a cost increase of 157,000 when they switched to year-round schooling! Now that is a lot of money going out the window. If you would just stick with how it's always been we would not have this problem. This way is so much better and cheaper for the students and the school.

This are the good effect that come from year round school. The first one is that they no summer gap. So kids don't forget every

Year-round schools affect multiple people because in the text it said, that teachers have more time to plan lessons to make them better, and so the students get more out of the lessons. This explains to you that teachers have more time to plan the lessons. And also it gives the students a break when they really need it, for example here is a quote that I got from the text, “One student said, "I love it. Just about the time I'm really tired, I get a break." This shows you a quote from the text about how relieving those breaks are. Another piece of evidence that the text said was that, teachers in schools with a long summer break (of 10 weeks) are so busy teaching the classes, that they have less time to plan lessons for their classes. This shows