Year-Round School Analysis

In order to accommodate the year round calendar, there are several forms of year round education. The first form follows a single track calendar. This is the most popular type of calendar (Shields, 2000). A single track year is usually implemented to “provide a more balanced and enriched education program or to accommodate the special scheduling needs of a community” (Glines, 2002, 2699). A single track calendar takes on a 45/15 design. This is where students go to school for forty-five days in a row, and then have a fifteen day break. It is a continuous cycle. Schools usually begin in early August, and follow this pattern four times to complete the school year (Glines, 2002). The three week break in between is called an intersession. During this time, students can choose to take additional educational courses through “remedial,

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.

This is how the Year-Round School format would work. Students would attend school for a certain amount of days, and then the students would receive a longer break period. This would be repeated all year long. Primarily, the education administration is taking the summer break and splitting it equally throughout the year (nayre.org). The school districts that Year-Round School will help students, yet it may actually hurt them socially. For example, the long summer break provides students with the exciting opportunities such as camps and family vacations. These are learning opportunities that take place outside of the classroom by teaching young children valuable life skills including patience, teamwork, and tolerance (ltisdschools.org ). Also, teenagers may

Another important advantage for many school districts is that year-round school can enable multi-track schedules. A multi-track schedule is one in which teachers and students are divided into equally sized groups called tracks (Gerard 1). Each track attends school and has vacation at the same time, but there is always at least one track on vacation at any time (1). This is somewhat analogous to our P.E. system at Johnston High. Imagine if everyone had P.E. on the same day; we’d never be able to manage students or fit them into the gyms. This is comparable to our

Industries such as business and medicine depend on extreme methods and forward thinking ideas. To be a successful enterprise, one must be willing to take risks and try new things. Within the last century, education has attempted to take a leap of faith by completely flipping the traditional school schedule and idea of summer vacation upside down. Just as with any idea, there are advantages and disadvantages as well as supporters and opponents. Each district must look at their own individual needs and evaluate the trials from schools that have gone before them to decide if year-round schooling would benefit their school.

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.

When a person first mentions the idea of year-round schooling, their comment is usually met with a look of dread. The image of year-round schooling is that students must go to school every day throughout the entire year with no breaks. This is an untrue image. Students are given frequent breaks throughout the school year to make up for the shorter summer break. It was first used in the 1800s, which goes against many people’s thoughts that it is a new alternative schooling proposal (Research). At that time year-round schooling was used in industrial cities to teach English to children of immigrants. By the early 1900s, year-round schooling was used as a method to reduce overcrowding, underfunding,

One way students could benefit is that this schooling could provide them with an increased student centered instructional strategy during a year-round school year. These could be activities that activate prior knowledge, hands on projects, in depth discussions, and multiple intelligences. These learning experiences are highly effective, but they are also time consuming. On a multi track schedule, students could also be exposed to smaller classroom sizes, which could benefit the student giving them more time to themselves, and to their assigned teacher for extra instruction.

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.

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.

Have you ever found yourself in the same schedule? Repeating almost the same day over and over. Students with traditional scheduled schooling have to go 70 plus days before just a short break. If we had year-round schooling the most we would have to go to school before a break is 45 days. Plus students would be able to advance more quickly, teachers would be happier, and our school would have a higher grade point average. This is why year-round schooling could help the staff and students of linden schools.

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 with year-round schooling utilize something called the “multi-track” system. Essentially, the school is divided into four or five different “tracks.” Vacations are staggered between the tracks in such as way so that while three out four tracks are currently in school, the other track is on vacation. When one track returns, another track goes on vacation. By staggering vacations, overcrowded schools can alleviate some of the stress of having too many students.

As Charles Ballinger and Carolyn Kneese indicate in their book, School Calendar Reform, “A balanced year-round calendar provides a logical pacing of instruction, followed by regular breaks. Refreshed by the breaks, teachers and students return ready to work” (Wat). With regular breaks it gives the brain time off to come back ready to learn. Year round schooling with frequent breaks have a more steady pace of learning to prevent learning loss. Hanover Research reported year round schedules propose systems diminish the chance of teacher burnout, student stress, and dropout rates.

Year-round schooling may also be an appealing option for parents and students of innovative educational solutions. As the National Education Association explains, there are recognized benefits as well as challenges to changing a system that's been in place as long as the traditional school year, and it may be too early to quantify this approach's affect on summer learning loss. That said, the approach is gaining popularity; the Congressional Research Service finds that the number of year-round schools has risen from just 410 in 1985 to 3,700 in the 2011-2012 school year.