Year-Round Schooling For All American Students: A Good Thing

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When Americans think of year-round education they immediately relate it to no summer vacations, hence the reason why, at first glance, most students and parents are contrary to that which comes off as a negative idea. Little do we know, as Americans, that year-round schooling has many more advantages than disadvantages. Back when schools had just began, summers were necessary because children needed to help their families by working on their families farms. Nowadays, as we all know, this is not the case. Year-round schooling consists of the same amount of school days, 180, just spread out over 12 months rather than 10. Although students do not get a “summer” they do, in fact, get numerous 2-3 week breaks throughout the school year (Tumgoren, 2009, L02). During these breaks, optional classes and workshops are offered to students whom are seeking extra help in classes, parents who can’t afford daycare, or for kids who are just plain bored. These workshops offered during students’ weeks off are called intersessions. Imagine how much knowledge our students will gain if federal Department of Education funding goes towards these intersessions! Retaining and expanding the knowledge of our students is the objective of these intersession classes. If this project is funded by the government there will be a plethora of positive and successful outcomes in result of these optional intersession classes.

Certainly, neither students nor teachers enjoy the idea of the school year without a summer, but, in terms of year-round schooling, this is not necessarily the case. Although there is no official “summer” break, there are multiple 15-30 day breaks throughout the year (Schulte, 2009, B1). The importance of this is the students’ retention of the...

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...filmed them, later learning how to edit and revise them on the computer. Schulte tells readers that year-round schooling was worrisome to both her and her children at first, but after realizing how beneficial it ended up being in the end, they realized how much they truly loved it. Intersessions not only offer remedial sessions for children needing extra help, but also classes teaching things such as karate, ballett, photography, cooking, swimming, calligraphy, Japanese, and art(INTEXTXITE).

According to President Obama and the Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the traditional school day and school year are “outdated” and “inadequate for the demands of 21st-century life”(INTEXTCITE). The reason why students in other counties outscore many American students is because they typically attend, on average, 50 more days of school per year than the average American student.

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