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Year Round Education Essay

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Year Round Education

For more than twenty years the educational and economic benefits of year round schooling have been debated in the United States. Experts agree that year round schooling may not be the answer to the problems of all school districts. However in more than 205 districts nation wide, problems have been resolved by year round schooling. First I need to explain that this is different from extending the school year; on a year round schedule, students attend school the same number of days-180-as students on the traditional nine-month calendar. The difference is that year round education (YRE) students have several short vacations rather than one three-month summer break. Most year-round schools operate on a multi-track …show more content…

These countries typically require longer instructional days and more of them than most American schools, where the eight-hour-per-day, 180-day-a-year model is standard (Worsnop,96). This type of schooling may be the answer to the decades-old concern that American students are being ill-prepared to compete with their counterparts overseas. By the most objective measure, test scores, year-round education seems to be working. For example, before switching to its new schedule, Socorro schools had some of the lowest test scores in the country. Now Socorro students outscore the state average on the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (Blackman,99) For many school administrators, the most persuasive argument in favor of YRE is that it offers a cost-effective way of relieving classroom overcrowding. Instead of renting commercial space, portable classrooms or constructing new schools-- administrators can enlarge the capacity of existing facilities by converting them to year- round operation. "Implementing a year-round calendar extends the capacity of a school by 33 percent," according to NAYRE (National Association for Year-Round Education.) The Oxnard Elementary School District is considered the pioneer of year round educational systems. Oxnard first reorganized their schedule in 1976. The driving forces behind the updated schedule were the increasing number of students in the buildings and lack of funds. Oxnard has had success with this arrangement. Building

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