Year Round Schooling

1655 Words4 Pages

Year Round Schooling

For the most part most public schools these days attend school for 9 months. With the allowed breaks and holidays it averages out to be about 180 days out of the 365 in a given year. Children attend school for approximately half of the year. This schedule is enough to get an average child in and out of school in 13 years. When the phrase/words year round schooling are brought to someone’s attention the problem people usually see is that they think there child is in school for a full year. Actually, year round schooling is more of an organizational change in the schools system rather than a full extension of their learning. Lately there has been debating going on whether children should attend school for half of the year or if children should attend school for a full year. The benefits and downfalls of year round schooling are both very important in deciding whether or not school systems should change or simply just stick to the traditional way of teaching.

Year round schooling has been looked at as a positive change in a school curriculum for an array of different reasons. An important reason that has been brought up is the idea of year round schooling in the form of Multi-track year round schooling. This is when the school is broken up into about four different sections. This includes the students and staff members. These groups are called tracks. While one track is in school the other is usually on a break. This helps put a halt on over crowding. “Implementing a four-track system increases the capacity of a school by 33 percent” (M. McCabe). This is important because school systems will be allowed to cut back there spending money on building larger schools and they can then focus on gett...

... middle of paper ...

...uth. Things such as this cannot be done as easily in a short break.

The idea of year-round school is becoming a more and more controversial issue with everyday that passes. The benefits and downfalls are all very powerful and each hold strong points. It doesn’t seem that the debate is going to end soon, but with more and more experiments going on with the educational systems, maybe we’ll have a concrete answer soon on which form of the school year is better. But for now the choice is up to you—do you agree with or oppose to the issue of year-round schooling?

Bibliography

McCabe, M. (2004, Jan 27). Year-round schooling. Retrieved March 23, 2004, from www.edweek.com/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=109#fta#fta.

"Year-Round School." Scholastic Action 6 May 2002: 4.

McGlynn, Ann. "Districts that School Year-Round." School Administrator Mar. 2002: 34.

Open Document