An extended school year for Roanoke students? It’s being discussed.
Roanoke City Council and school board talked briefly Monday about an extended school year and the issue will likely come up again today when the city school board meets. The proposition is an interesting one and something I thought we could explore a bit more here.
The Roanoke Times I File photo
Superintendent Rita Bishop says she supports a longer year, but admits it’s not without obstacles. I found this statement she made Monday to be incredibly powerful:
“When you have children with poverty issues an extended school year could be a miracle.”
Obviously an extended year where students would attend school more than just the traditional 180 days would give educators more time with students, which with all the standards that must be taught in a year could be a welcome change. Students could also avoid some of the dreaded “summer slide” each year where kids experience a learning loss in the summer when they’re out of school.
But there’s also a question of cost (and that was touched on briefly Monday). How does a system pay for a longer school year? There’s teachers to pay and probably upped utility and supply costs. Schools have had a tough enough time finding the funds for a traditional year as school systems have limped through the recent recession. And officials would also need to get buy in from staffers.
A nearby school has made a longer year work and it’s paid off. Just down the road in Lynchburg, William Marvin Bass Elementary School operates on an extended year calendar.
School begins earlier and ends at roughly the same time and there are intersession breaks during the year where student can get extra help. An analysis by the Lynchburg News & Advance showed the school had “the best combined reading and math Standards of Learning test pass rates of any elementary school in the Lynchburg-area.”
Said then Superintendent Paul McKendrick: “I think the biggest thing is just more time.”
According to the article, Bass students get about 20 to 35 more days of instruction than other students.
The school went to the extended calendar in 2004 and as recently as November education officials were mulling calendar changes for the rest of the division.
So, what do you think? An extended year? Yay or nay? And why? And are you a student, educator or parent?
January 8, 2013 - 11:35 AM
Hello Annie, this is the first time I’ve noticed your blog. Have you been on long? Anyway, I’m glad to see a blog dedicated to education!!!
This is an interesting question for me. I am both studying to be a secondary teacher and a mother of two school age children. On one hand, I strongly agree that kids should have a longer school day and year. Our current calender is based on an agricultural society, which no longer exists. It is also a burden for working parents because they constantly have to find child care providers, but above all, it does harm to almost all children to have a two month break in the summer. Even the most dedicated parents have a hard time keeping their children learning through the summer unless they are either wealthy enough to afford to send their kids to summer learning camps, or a savvy stay-at-home parent, or perhaps both. However, this simply isn’t the case for the majority of American parents. On the flip side, one of the benefits that many teachers prize is having summers off, and there’s also the expense involved. It’s certainly not an easy hurdle to overcome, but in the end we should be doing what’s best for students and that would be to extend the school year.
Hey there, thanks for commenting. This is actually the first comment on “Learning Lines.” The blog just launched this week so please bookmark it and visit often. Good point about the current calendar being based on a agricultural society.
The assumption is being made that learning can’t happen unless it occurs in a formal, structured environment (school),where kids can be sorted and the learning can constantly be assessed and evaluated by experts. This is a slap in the face to parents and other family members who teach kids a myriad of skills such as cooking, home maintenance, woodworking and on and on, and a vote of no confidence to the kids themselves who sometimes need the time to get a little bored to find some self initiative to pursue something creative or explore something new and have some ungraded,out of the box learning on their own. Time is a critical element here as well, time to experience life and learning within the family unit without the pressures inherent in a busy, stressful school year. This time is what is being threatened by the longer school initiative.
Although this proposal at face value sounds positive for children from severely disadvantaged home environments, my thinking is that eventually the “what’s good for some should be good for all” mentality will creep in and more and more children will be expected to go to longer school to “keep up”.
Parents and family should always be the primary influence of a child’s life, and schools should think more about how to strengthen and support that rather than slowly erode those relationships by taking the child away from the family unit more of the day and year. Schools can not expect to raise children; it is not their job. —-
Carolyn you are obviously not a teacher. Public schools have to take over parenting because parents of a lot of students don’t do that – parent. Education is not a priority for them. They come to school unprepared. No one makes sure they do homework, go to bed at a decent hour, dress appropriately, eat appropriately, etc. The “catch up” work that teachers must do with these students is unbelievable. That said; summers should be left as they are, but with summer school for those students that need remediation.
If you advocate children spend six more weeks in your institution, then you need to be really sure your institution is the best place for those children to be because that’s what public school is: an institution, with all of the sausage making tendencies of institutions. I do not think most public schools are this good. My kid is in RCPS kindergarten and does multiple worksheets everyday despite how much research doesn’t support this approach. Improve what you’re doing now instead of just adding more!