Nelson Mandela once said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” Our world is fueled by knowledge of every person who lives, and who has lived. Now there is controversy over when our students should be learning, and when they should be on break. While many schools are switching to a year-round school calendar in order to try and increase student achievement, the traditional 10 month calendar should be the preferred format due to structure of school programs, organization, and higher academic results.
Currently Year Round Education (YRE) is growing popularity all across the country, but schools are questioning if the new calendar is beneficial. The number of schools reached its peak in the last 5 years; “In the 2011-2012 school year, there were 3,700 public schools across the nation operating on a year-round calendar cycle" (Skinner 1). YRE comes in a variety of plans. When a school adopts the new calendar, it has to choose what plan would be most effective for their students and community; “The most popular YRE calendar is the 45-15 plan, where students attend school for 45 days and then go on vacation for 15 days"(Weaver 1). Two other ways to organize a YRE calendar are the 60-20 and the 90-30 plans.
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Instead of students being required to remember context over a 2 month span YRE reduces that to 3 weeks. But, according to Rebecca Skinner, "There is some consensus that year-round schooling has greatly affected student retention over breaks; however,the quality of the studies that led to these findings has been questioned"(Skinner 2). -- Even though YRE would trigger a sense of a solution to this retention problem, data on the situation has not been confirmed. There have not been a sufficient amount of studies to prove a more affected schedule for education
Silva, Elena. "Revising the Current School Calendar Has Many Implications." Year-Round Schools. Ed. Adriane Ruggiero. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. At Issue. Rpt. from "On the Clock: Rethinking the Way Schools Use Time." Education Sector Reports. 2007. 1-9. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 19 May 2014.
The United States has a long and proud history of providing public education to its citizen’s children. The fundamental idea behind the creation of this educational system was that it be available to all, regardless of geographical location or family status. In the era that this initiative was generated many of America’s families lived and worked on farms, and children were a vital part of this lifestyle. The founders of the United States’ public schools had to create a plan that included all children, even those who were expected to perform agricultural work in the harvest season. Thus, the nine-month school calendar was brought into use, allowing farming children a three month break from school in the summer to aid their families in the crop yield. In time, youth participation in farming became outdated and obsolete, and this arrangement slipped from necessity to simply being a tradition held on to through the years. In our modern era, a year-round school calendar would benefit the teachers, students, and finances of America’s public schools.
The BC Ministry of Education recently allowed for flexibility in how school districts choose to organize their school calendars. BC School Districts currently follow a traditional school year calendar with students attending school approximately 190 days, most with a two week break in winter and spring and two months off during the summer months. “This model was very practical when the school calendar was designed to accommodate children with the needs of an agricultural economy” (qtd in Webb 5), and can be “described by some as outdated and irrelevant in today’s society” (Winter 401). A balanced school year calendar, also referred to as a modified school year and year round school, would maintain the same number of instructional days, but would evenly distribute breaks throughout the year. The literature and research available on the balanced school year is mostly American, with a few Canadian sources. This research indicates that those in support of this type of calendar see many benefits, but the most strongly supported with evidence is the reduction of summer learning loss experienced by students, especially for English as a second language (ESL) and low income students. For those who oppose the balanced school year, some believe summer learning loss does not exist and some strongly argue that changing the school calendar is only warranted with proof of increased academic achievement for students.
The traditional school calendar has been in effect for more than a century. By the middle of the nineteenth century rural areas the school year lasted for five to six months, based on the harvest schedule. In contrast, many schools in urban areas were open for eleven or twelve months. A uniform calendar was established in 1847 that is the traditional calendar of today. (Shields, 2000) There was resistance to this calendar from the beginning; people in urban areas had to go to school from much longer to receive the same education. YRE began in a premature form in 1904 in Bluffton, Indiana with a four-quarter schedule. (Speck, n.d.) YRE began to be popular in states like Texas, New Jersey, North Dakota, Nebraska, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. It ceased during WWII because national uniformity was felt to be essential to the war effort. Hayward, CA implemented at official YRE programs at Park Elementary School in 1968 to become the first YRE school after WWII. (Speck, n.d.) YRE schools began to sprout up all over the country after that. In 1969 the first multiple tract school was established in Missouri. Since the late 70’s YRE has picked up in popularity and is a continuing trend. According to the National Association for Year-Round Education, more than 2 million students attend close to 3,000 year-round schools in 41 states and 610 school districts, which is a dramatic increase compared to the early 1990’s. There have been a variety of YRE schedules and currently there is the choice of single or multi-track, options within both of those, and an extended school year.
There are various models of YRS that can be implemented, all of which are reconfigurations of the traditional, nine-month calendar. In some areas these models are known as alternative or modified calendars (Shields & Oberg, 2000) and they all have unique characteristics. Because of theses differences, school systems should spend some time analyzing which model will be best for their particular school; educators may find that some models work better than others depending on the school. Estimates on the exact number of year round schedules vary, although it has been estimated that at least 50 different scheduling patterns exist (Palmer & Bemis, 1999). The most common alternatives include the single track calendar and the multi-track calendar.
Back in the olden days, schools were originally put on a schedule in which students would spend the majority of the year in school, and 2-3 months off for summer break. The purpose of this was so that children could be home for the summer to help their parents run family farms. Today, due to progressive industrialization of farming, modernized farming equipment, and decrease in family farms, the need for children to be home during the summer to help run family farms is minute if not obsolete; because of this many schools across the United States have transitioned to year-round schooling (“Summer”). Contrary to belief, year round schooling does not usually mean more school days. Currently most year-round schools adhere to the 180 day school year. Instead of the traditional lengthy summer vacation, year-round schools distribute the 180 days throughout the entire year while allowing for shorter breaks. Common scheduling for year-round schools includes cycles of 2-3 months in school followed by 2-3 week breaks (“Research Spotlight...
Year round school or the modified school year is a rearrangement of the traditional school year to provide the students with continuous learning throughout the school year. Students receive the same amount of instructional time as a traditional school. In year round schools, the instructional time is balanced without of school time more evenly. (Winter, 2005) The National Association for Year Round Schooling defines it as “a schedule which contains no break lasting longer than eight weeks-schools are able to keep their students in constant learning mode, and are able to use the intersessions between periods of schooling to address the problems of students who are falling behind.” (St. Gerard, 2007, pg. 57) There are three common tracks of year round schooling. They are the single track, multitrack, and extended year. The single track is scheduled throughput the year into intersessions which allow time for enrichment or red-mediation. The multitrack is used to help schools reduce overcrowding. The school divides the teachers and students into groups of an equal size. Each group has its own schedule. One group is on intercession while the other is in school. The extended year increases the amount of time spent in schools from 180 days to as many as 240 days a year. (McGlynn, 2002)
Throughout time education has been considered a process that every so often must be improved. The education quality in the U.S. has declined over the years and people have been looking for a way to make improvements. A more recent proposal has been to go from a traditional nine-month schedule to an all year program. Supporters of year round school claim it gives the student a better education. However, the prospect of year round school is not beneficial to the taxpayers pocket, to the education a student receives, or to the people involved with the district.
Shortly, we became more industrialized and had more advanced technology which made the summer vacation that was so crucial to the survival of the family now purposeless. With these long summer breaks, it can affect a child’s learning in so many ways. According to the benefits of year-round education article,”As of the 2006-2007 school year, nearly 2,800 U.S. schools were classified as year round.” One essential problem with long summer breaks is lack of retention of learned material and can lead to the student not being able to make progress with their learning in the next school year. In year-round schools, kids don’t waste time on review as opposed to traditional schools who take about three weeks reviewing the information they learned in the
School is usually a huge part of every child’s daily agenda. Teenagers in high school basically dedicate their entire day to school and homework. Students in grade 8 are similarly going through the same process as high school students. As students work 2 months after the Winter Break, some of them tend to start reducing their quality of work. When we’re tired of doing school work for two straight months, why should we only receive a short March break?
Family vacations, pool memberships, and corn de-tasseling; these have been the experiences of traditional Midwestern summers. For centuries young American children have attended school during the winter months, during farming off seasons when their families could afford to be without them. Families have grown accustomed to a traditional school calendar that provides time for bonding throughout the year. Students have grown accustomed to an eight week break during the summer months where they are allowed to refresh their minds before returning for a new school year. Unfortunately, these traditional experiences and practices are now in jeopardy. In today’s race to improve student achievement, traditional school calendars have become a point of contention. Today more and more school districts and parents alike have begun to debate the pros and cons of an alternative school calendar.
According to Patricia McCracken, who grew up attending a year-round school, in the article “The Pros and Cons of Year-Round Schools” written in 2015 by Scholastic, “It was really hard to get involved in the work because as soon as you geared up, you had to gear back down again” (Scholastic, 2015). The frequent breaks are disruptive to the motivation and learning students have. Once students start the six to nine week period of school, they feel it is over too quick and they do not have time to get back into the swing of things. The time allotted for school is too short to allow students to fully learn a concept or unit. When the unit may be coming to an end with a test in sight the students could have a break right before the test, which causes them to forget information that will be crucial to know for the test. There is no longer a exact date that all work must be finished, as the last day of school would be in a traditional school, which means the concepts must be fit within the breaks and could be rushed through in order to fit it in. Scholastic also writes that McCracken, whose mother taught at a traditional school said, “It meant my sister and I were basically latchkey kids for two or three years because it was impossible to find a babysitter for two weeks every six weeks” (Scholastic, 2015). With a year-round schedule, finding appropriate childcare can be a problem as well.
The system we use today was not always in place. In fact, during Colonial times, year-round education was prominent. Starting in 1645, students would go to schools for ten hours a day year-round. The only reason the 9 month, 180 day system was only ever implemented in order to support the agricultural economy of the 19th and 20th century. Children and teens would need to take the summer off from schools to help their families out on the farm. It has now become obsolete. The excruciatingly long summer vacation no longer serves a valid purpose, and hinders the learning of kids. Often, teachers spend up to a quarter of the year reviewing topics from the year before which students forgot during the summer. With year-rou...
The year round educational (YRE) system was implemented in 1904, to solve the problem of overcrowded schools.( Bemis & Palmer ,1998)Now this system is used to solve many other problems that the educational system has been facing. A YRE schedule allows students the same amount of time in school as the traditional calendar. But instead of a 3-month vacation, students in year round school have smaller breaks throughout the year. YRE can also be made into a single or multi-track facility of education this allows more students in schools and also gives teachers a way to earn a living in the summer months.
Day or School Year: A Systematic Review of Research." Sage 80.3 (2010): 401- 36. Web. 16 Feb. 2014.