Year-Round Schooling

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.

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.

This shows that year-round school is at least as good as the traditional schedule in helping students learn. Year-round school also allows more time for remedial classes during the breaks, which can help students who are falling behind during the school year catch back up. This is in contrast with summer school, which only occurs after school is over and students are finished with the curriculum, making students have to start a totally new class just to catch up. Remedial classes reinforce material that is fresh in students’ minds instead of forcing them to recall something they may have learned half a year ago and probably forgotten. This once again cuts down on the time it takes to bring students up to speed with their classes.

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.

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 gap between lower and higher income students, and advantaged and disadvantaged students becomes smaller as well. Because learning loss is reduced because of the breaks, teachers do not have the spend time reviewing previously taught material. Instead, they can teach new information with the time that is typically used for reviewing (Reasons). The extra time can also be used to ensure that the students all understand what they are learning. With standard schooling most students whose parents have a higher income have the opportunity to attend summer camps and other learning places over the summer (Weller). The problem with that is that most students whose parents have a lower income and can not afford the summer camps. This creates a learning gap between the two groups because the lower income student generally do not participate in any extra learning. Year-round schooling can decrease the gap between the students. The higher income students can still participate in camp, but as they do that the lower income students will continue to learn and not stop the learning process during the summer days (Weller). Research shows that performance among low income students increases with year-round schooling (Lynch). Studies have found that students with learning disadvantages fall behind as well.

“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”

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.

Have you ever wondered what the difference between traditional schooling and year-round education is? Maybe you didn’t know that there are more than one type of year-round education. A year-round school schedule can benefit educators, students, and even families. Year-round schooling is where the breaks in school are on a balanced schedule. Instead of having a three month summer break, there would be 60 days off and then the students would be back to school. If on a multi track schedule, teachers could use their off time to substitute at their school on a different track or at another school to get paid more. For students, the shorter breaks away from school increase retention rates, therefore reducing the amount of review necessary at

Year-round school maintains that students forget knowledge and skills they learned during the previous school year. There are studies that support this theory. Students show loss of knowledge in math and language arts knowledge over the long summer break. Students must re-acclimate themselves to the school schedule, their new teachers and their classmates, as well as to school rules and expectations, homework, and non-academic demands such as participation in sports. From teachers experience the first month of each new school year is spent figuring out what the student has remembered from the previous year and reviewing what they have forgotten over the summer

One of the most documented reasons for switching to a year round school is what’s known as the “summer slide.” Students leave spring semester after taking their exams and don’t think about school for almost 12 weeks. These students then come back in the fall not only failing at subjects they knew three months prior, but in dire need of having the foundations re taught to them. This forces teachers to spend valuable class time re-teaching lessons, which dips into class time that should be used for grade appropriate lessons. In her article, O’Sulivan theorizes, “the less times students are away from school, the less time teachers will have to spend reviewing material from the previous year and acclimating students to classroom rules and procedures”.

The traditional American school year was constructed around a nine-month schedule requiring 180 days in the classroom. But times are changing and many people are suggesting that the school system in America does away with this “outdated” system and move into this new idea of the “year round education”. There are theories that knowledge is lost when kids go on summer break and others think that financially summer breaks are in fact needed. What needs to be explored further is what affect does year round school have economically, whether year round schooling aid’s or hinders children’s educational knowledge, and how would this new schooling affect children socially.

A lot of people have misunderstood the “year-round” schooling. The year-round school is not an alternative curriculum for learning, but it can also be called continuous learning, all-seasons learning, or four seasons (Warrick, 1995). Quinlan, George, and Emmett (1987) define YRE as a reorganization of the school calendar, into instructional blocks and vacations distributed across the calendar year to ensure continuous learning. Students that learn in a year-round school, can progress with less interruption during the summer months. Students also retain more information during the four, short break than they would after the normal summer vacation. It is good for children to attend year-round school due to some loss of knowledge and skills over the summer vacation. Not only is this good for the students, but it is also good for the teachers because they would not have to worry about preparing materials to reteach their

“A long summer vacation in which students forget much of what they have learned is far from ideal for learning” (Shields et al.). Many educators are beginning to realize the benefits of year-round schooling. Even though year-round education is not traditional, year-round schooling should be implemented because year-round education increases academic achievement, frequent breaks allow students and teachers to recharge, and track plans relieve overcrowding. Year-round students still retain school holidays, but these holidays are distributed throughout the year. These breaks created are called intersessions. Year-round education comes in many